Investigation underway for latest New York train derailment

World Today

A terrifying start to morning rush hour in New York City: a commuter train slammed into the end-of-the-line barricade and derailed at the Brooklyn terminal with more than 100 hurt.

CGTN’s John Terrett reports.

A bumpy start to 2017 for an estimated 600 New York-bound commuters, arriving at Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal Wednesday.

Their Long Island Railroad train hit the barrier at the end of the line with multiple injuries but non-life threatening, according to New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo.

An investigation’s underway into why the train failed to pull in safely. It’s the latest in a series of commuter train failures in America’s largest city.

To the west, at the end of last September, a New Jersey Transit train ploughed into the buffers at Hoboken station. A woman was killed by falling debris.

Preliminary report findings suggest the driver was suffering from a sleeping disorder, and somehow lost consciousness as he approached the station.

To the north, in December 2013, a Metro North Railroad train rounded a bend too quickly and spun off the tracks – killing four people – the driver said he’d gone into the curve in a “daze.”

And to the south in May 2015 in Philadelphia, an Amtrak train took a bend at twice the legal speed limit and derailed killing eight passengers, and injuring nearly 200 others. The official report says the driver was likely distracted.

There is equipment available to slow down trains when drivers lose attention, but it’s not available on all lines, usually because of a lack of funding or contract disputes.

Back in Brooklyn, the clean-up goes on and the injured know with mostly bumps and bruises, they got away lightly.