• Mentally deficient female Obama voter SUV driver's behavior under scru

    From De Blasfail@1:2320/100 to All on Thu Feb 5 01:48:24 2015

    From: de-blasfail@nyc.com

    XPost: nyc.politics, soc.women, sac.politics
    XPost: alt.politics.liberalism

    VALHALLA, N.Y. (AP) u The baffling behavior of a woman whose SUV
    stopped between the crossing gates on a railroad track came
    under scrutiny Wednesday as investigators sought clues to a
    fiery commuter train crash that killed six people.

    National Transportation Safety Board officials were looking at
    the Metro-North train's black-box-style recorders, seeking to
    learn its speed, whether brakes were applied and whether it
    sounded its horn as it approached the suburban New York crossing
    where it slammed into the SUV, NTSB vice chairman Robert Sumwalt
    said.

    "We intend to find out not only what happened, but we want to
    find out why it happened," he said at the site of Tuesday
    evening's rush-hour collision in Valhalla, about 20 miles north
    of New York City.

    Later Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer said early indications are
    that the train was going 58 mph, or within the 60-to-70-mph
    speed limit that area.

    Investigators also planned to look at the track signals'
    recording devices, interview the train's operators, peer into
    the wreckage with laser-scanning devices and seek aerial
    footage, he said.

    Meanwhile, officials were using dental records to identify the
    badly burned victims u five men on the train and the SUV driver,
    officials said. Several others remained hospitalized, at least
    two with critical or serious injuries.

    It was the deadliest accident in the 22-year history of one of
    the nation's busiest commuter railroads u one that has come
    under a harsh spotlight over a series of accidents in recent
    years.

    "It's really inexplicable, based on the facts we have now," Gov.
    Andrew Cuomo said on WCBS-AM radio.

    The wreck happened after dark in heavy traffic in an area where
    the tracks are straight but driving can be tricky. Motorists
    exiting or entering the adjacent Taconic Parkway have to turn
    and cross the tracks near a wooded area and a cemetery.

    The driver had gotten out of her Mercedes SUV momentarily after
    the crossing's safety gates came down around her and hit her
    car, according to the driver behind her, Rick Hope.

    "I said to myself, 'The clock is ticking here, the gate is down,
    the bells are ringing u what are you going to do here?'" he told
    WNYW-TV. "She looked a little confused, gets back in the car and
    pulls forward" on the tracks.

    Traffic was moving slowly at the time, choked with drivers
    seeking to avoid the Taconic Parkway because of an accident, he
    noted.

    "It looks like she stopped where she stopped because she didn't
    want to go on the tracks," Hope added. "It was dark, so maybe
    she didn't know she was in front of the gate."

    Railroad grade crossings typically have gate arms designed to
    lift automatically if they hit a car or other object on the way
    down, railroad safety consultant Grady Cothen said. The wooden
    arms are designed to be easily broken if a car trapped between
    them moves forward or backward, he said.

    As of Wednesday morning, transit officials hadn't found any
    problems with the tracks or signal, Westchester County Executive
    Rob Astorino said.

    It was not the first deadly crash at the site: A Metro-North
    train hit a truck, killing its driver, at the same Commerce
    Street crossing in 1984, according to Federal Railroad
    Administration records.

    Rep. Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y, said Tuesday's accident underscores
    the need for positive train control, a technology that uses WiFi
    and GPS to monitor trains' exact position and automatically
    applies the brakes to prevent collisions or lessen their
    severity. While not specifically designed to address grade-
    crossing accidents, the technology can be expanded for such
    purposes, he said.

    Congress passed a 2008 law that requires all railroads to
    install positive train control by the end of 2015, but it's
    clear most of them will not meet the deadline.

    The crash was so powerful that the electrified third rail came
    up and pierced the train, and the SUV was pushed about 400 feet.
    Cuomo said the SUV's gas tank apparently exploded, starting a
    fire that consumed the SUV and the train's first car, which was
    left blackened and mangled.

    Elizabeth Bordiga was commuting home from her New York City
    nursing job when she suddenly felt the train jerk a few times.
    She and other passengers in the middle part of the train started
    calmly walking to the back. But then they started smelling
    gasoline, "and somebody said, "There's a fire," she recalled.

    But they couldn't open the emergency window or figure out how to
    escape until a firefighter in the train got a door open, she
    said. Commuters lifted each other down from the train to the
    ground about 7 feet below, said Bordiga, who uses a cane.

    "When I was on the ground, I looked to the right and saw flames.
    I couldn't believe it," she said.

    In the first car, a man whose own hands were burned elbowed open
    the emergency exit latch, allowing some of the train's roughly
    700 passengers to escape, passenger Christopher Gross recalled
    on ABC's "Good Morning America."

    The train's engineer tried to rescue people until the smoke and
    flames got so severe that he had to escape, Astorino said.

    Every day, trains travel across more than 212,000 highway-grade
    rail crossings in the U.S. There are an average of 230 to 250
    deaths a year at such crossings, down over 50 percent from two
    decades ago, FRA figures show.

    Risky driver behavior or poor judgment accounts for 94 percent
    of grade crossing accidents, according to a 2004 government
    report.

    Metro-North is the nation's second-busiest commuter railroad,
    after the Long Island Rail Road, serving about 280,000 riders a
    day.

    Late last year, the NTSB issued rulings on five Metro-North
    accidents in New York and Connecticut in 2013 and 2014,
    repeatedly finding fault with the railroad.

    Among the accidents was a 2013 derailment in the Bronx that
    killed four people, the railroad's first passenger fatalities,
    The NTSB said the engineer had fallen asleep at the controls
    because of a severe, undiagnosed case of sleep apnea.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Ula Ilnytzky and Meghan
    Barr in New York; Joan Lowy in Washington; and Michael Kunzelman
    in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.

    http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/us/article/Commuter-train-slams- into-SUV-on-tracks-killing-6060921.php#/0

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