{"id":9,"date":"2009-06-25T16:05:24","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T21:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cityblock.wordpress.com\/?p=9"},"modified":"2011-02-20T16:23:25","modified_gmt":"2011-02-20T21:23:25","slug":"metro-crash-aftermath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/2009\/06\/25\/metro-crash-aftermath\/","title":{"rendered":"Metro Crash Aftermath"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the wake of Monday’s Red Line crash, DC’s various news outlets have uncovered all sorts of interesting factoids about Metro’s safety record and the implementation of various NTSB recommendations.\u00a0 Speculation about the causes have run rampant, ranging from mildly informed theories to pure guesswork.\u00a0 Some immediately blamed the now deceased operator, citing likely use of a cell phone.\u00a0 DCist now reports<\/a> via WTOP<\/a> that’s not the case.<\/p>\n

There’s also been a lot of discussion about the 1000 series rail cars and their crashworthiness.\u00a0 At Greater Greater Washington, Matt Johnson has an excellent summary of Metro’s safety systems, particularly noting the design of the Automatic Train Control system<\/a> as well as the track record of the 1000 series rail cars<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 WCP gives you tips on how to avoid them<\/a>, while the WMATA board agrees to move the cars to the middle of trainsets<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Public interest seems to focus on the 1000 series rail cars as the culprit, even though there’s no evidence that the cars themselves were the cause of the crash.\u00a0 To me, the more interesting news to come out was the City Paper’s report that the NTSB found “anomalies” in the trackside equipment<\/a> that’s part of the automatic train control system:<\/p>\n

\u2018Anomalies\u2019\u2014that\u2019s what federal investigators found in trackside electronic control equipment during testing yesterday, \u2019suggesting that computers might have sent one Red Line train crashing into another\u2019 on Monday evening, WaPo writes<\/a>. More from Lyndsey Layton<\/strong>, Maria Glod<\/strong>, and Lena H. Sun<\/strong>: \u2018A senior Metro official knowledgeable about train operations said an internal report confirmed that the computer system appeared to have faltered.\u2019 And that system, according to the NTSB\u2019s Debbie Hersman<\/strong>, is \u2018vital.\u2019 Then there\u2019s this: \u2018The steel rails show evidence that McMillan activated the emergency brakes 300 to 400 feet before the pileup\u2019\u2014but she would have been traveling 59 mph. See also WTOP<\/a>, NC8<\/a>, WRC-TV<\/a>, WUSA-TV<\/a>, WTTG-TV<\/a>, NYT<\/a>, and Examiner<\/a>, which notes that brake maintenance seems no longer to be an issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, it’s important to separate the two issues in this crash – the events that caused the crash itself, and the impact of the crash and the aftermath.\u00a0 The former is about why this happened in the first place, the latter is about the crashworthiness of the cars.\u00a0 Crashworthiness is important, without a doubt – but it’s also about keeping things as safe as possible after something has already gone wrong<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For that reason, the events that caused the crash itself are far more interesting to me.\u00a0 We have evidence that the train was operating on Auto mode, that it was traveling quite fast (though eyewitness accounts tend to vary as to how fast – nevertheless, the damage shows a great deal of force was involved).\u00a0 Given the slight curvature of the track, the speeds involved, and human reaction time to depress the Mushroom, it seems we can infer that the collision was unavoidable at that point – which would point to a very serious error with the Automatic Train Control system.<\/p>\n

That’s where my interest is as the investigation unfolds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the wake of Monday’s Red Line crash, DC’s various news outlets have uncovered all sorts of interesting factoids about Metro’s safety record and the implementation of various NTSB recommendations.\u00a0 Speculation about the causes have run rampant, ranging from mildly informed theories to pure guesswork.\u00a0 Some immediately blamed the now deceased operator, citing likely use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[448,459,460,474],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dc","tag-metro","tag-metro-crash","tag-transit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pHcGQ-9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1875,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/1875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alexblock.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}