Metro Collision, Washington DC
 

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0609/634125.html

At my last check, there's been 1 fatality and 9 injuries.

I hope all the GCers in the DC area are ok!

Update: "At least two" fatalities (http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/06/22/was...ash/index.html)

Today was also the first day of the summer youth employment program, so let's keep the teens in prayer, too.

This line and these stations are in the neighborhoods where I live and work, but I don't usually catch the train.

Thanks babe, I'm ok. My husband's law school is in that area, but luckily he didn't go out there today.

I send my prayers out to everyone...I was on the red line today (on the other end of DC), and we were stopped for 45 minutes clueless until myself and some other riders got news alerts on our blackberries. It's so terrifying....this is not a good month for DC.

And ADqtPiMel, I'm glad you and your husband are okay!

Glad to hear you and your husband are ok.

I'm touching base with my friends in the area now; a bunch of my friends have moved down there in recent years. Sounds like everyone is ok.

Was definitely on the red line, but not in NE. In the stations at first they said the red line at Fort Totten was closed because of a "technical difficulty" and then changed to "because of police activity." Noticed no difference on the yellow and blue lines.

Yes in NE (Northeast DC)
 

The accident was between Fort Totten and Takoma Stations, in the area where the Metro runs above ground in Northeast DC along side the Amtrak tracks. Brookland-CUA was closed as well as the two stations above. Last I saw, the count was 7 deaths.

According to wikipedia, the exact location is at 38.9605,-77.006, which is more or less where New Hampshire avenue crosses the track. See http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.96...8.9605,-77.006

Randy

9 deaths as of this morning :(
I am all too familiar with the Red Line (used to work near Union Station) :(
My thoughts go out to the victims and their families

I bet the conductor of the second train was texting.

The news was on in the background at work, and at one point, it was stated that the conductor of the second train had asked to have that particular train repaired. Also, there's proof that she had tried to stop the train.

God bless the people & their families who were involved in this tragedy. May the injured heal quickly & perfectly.

Not Texting
 

The screw from the NTSB that studied the accident indicated that the Metro Driver's Cell phone was in her backpack, which is a perfectly acceptable place to have it according to the regulations.

The NTSB ran a test train to the location of the stopped train and the sensors in the track did not properly transmit that to the central computers. The moving train was running on automatic, which at that point the computer will run the train between 55 and 59 miles per hour. With the stopped train being invisible to the central computers, the computers would have not had any reason to reduce speed. The stopped train was around a slight curve, so it wouldn't have been seen a very long distance down the track. The moving train had both the manual and emergency brakes put on before the crash.

It is entirely possible that the driver of the moving train did everything that she was trained to do, and it still wasn't enough.

There are also issues that the paired cars in the front of the train were in the 1000 series (the cars that metro bought when the first started the system in the mid 1970s).

Are you sure the conducter could not see the first train? Trains don't exactly make sharp turns.

Even if the sensors were not working there still should not have been an accident. The trains are not totally automated and they have a driver in the train for that purpose.

At 55-60 mph and a 125 ft brake pattern, the driver did not apply the brakes until a second or two before impact.

If you are driving anything and you are going around a bend with a blind spot don't you slow down until you can see what is ahead of you?

Why are you so invested in it being driver error?