A quiet, less well-attended memorial service was held on September 19th for one of the victims of the Los Angeles Metrolink train crash. This time, however, the family was keen to avoid the media glare. In fact, the venue for the service was hastily shifted to their residence after the news of the impending service at the mortuary was leaked to the media.

The person being remembered was Robert Sanchez, the engineer on Train 111, who is at center of investigations into the deadly train accident in Los Angeles. Sanchez is reported to have missed at least three stop lights that actually led to his train ending up on the same track as the freight train. The resulting crash has killed 25 people.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the service was attended by 60 friends and well-wishers, mostly Sanchez’s former colleagues from his locomotive engineers union. The family has been under scrutiny ever since the Metrolink train accident threw the jovial-looking Sanchez into the national media spotlight. Sanchez’s professional life has been dissected, his health problem has been widely discussed in the blogosphere, and details of his personal life have been salaciously written about. In the days since the Metrolink train crash in Los Angeles, we have found out more about Sanchez than we know about our next door neighbor.

His family is pained at this premature vilification of their bother. John Sanchez, Robert’s brother, in his very first interview, has revealed his worry that his brother has been painted in a negative light, and so soon after the accident. Investigation results are not yet out, and it will be at least a year before the full details of the tragedy are revealed, but, he complains, Metrolink authorities have been more than eager to lay the blame at his brother’s door.

John Sanchez makes a startling revelation that gives us more insight into the way things were conducted at the company that Sanchez worked for. This July, Sanchez had been involved in an accident with a pedestrian in a case of suicide. It was his first experience with suicide as a train engineer, although he had experienced it on a personal level. His partner killed himself in 2003. Sanchez told his family that he asked his superiors for more time off from work, to deal with the experience through counseling, but was forced to return back to work before he had been able to put the incident behind him. Normally, an engineer is entitled to three days of paid leave for counseling after they have gone though an experience like this.

This was a man who was clearly passionate about trains, and happiest when he was on one, but he did complain that his work schedules were crazy. He had trouble with his weight and diabetes, and had even been placed under medical leave last year after his diabetes ballooned to dangerous proportions. This was a man who had undergone intensely traumatic personal experience as the engineer of a train that had been used by a pedestrian to kill himself. He was not even given time to deal with this the way he should have been.

Like we mentioned earlier on our Metrolink accident attorney blog, we would be making a huge mistake by laying all the blame at the door step of a dead man, while ignoring the real persons accountable in this devastating train accident.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Associated Press is reporting that the rail reform bill, which had been sent for approval to the Senate, has passed a key vote. Senators voted 69-17 to push the bill to a final vote.

We have been closely monitoring the progress of this bill that contains some long-pending legislation on rail safety, right from the moment these provisions were introduced, to the passage of the bill in the House of Representatives. Now comes the welcome news that the final vote by the Senate is just a few days away. A vote on the bill will be taken on Wednesday, the news reports say.

Among the bill’s many provisions is a series of far-reaching measures that push for better rail safety in the country. This includes installing positive train control technology systems on high-risk tracks around the country by the year 2015. A high-risk track is one that is shared by freight and commuter trains. By this yardstick, all Metrolink tracks in the region are high-risk tracks.

The Bill also calls of revision of work schedules for rail employees. Rail worker fatigue has been a pressing problem as the National Transportation Safety Board has noted, and the split schedule has been especially blamed for the intense pressure that these workers are under. The engineer at the controls of Train 111 was, for instance, nearing the end of a grueling fifth day of split schedules. Rest hours on this schedule are few, and the engineer spends most of his time at the controls of a heavy locomotive.

As we have said before on this Metrolink accident attorneys blog, the rail safety reforms have been delayed, but better late than never.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

Last week, we reported on the hectic lobbying that Veolia Transportation, indulged in to be able to get bills that would impact the meal beak timings of its employees, passed. The company wanted to delay meal breaks from the current beginning of the fifth hour of the work shift to the end of the sixth hour of the work shift. The lobbying was unsuccessful, but it gives us an insight into the mindset at the company that contracted out the engineer, whose error has been blamed for the Metrolink train accident in Los Angeles.

This news report in the Los Angeles Times should therefore, come as no surprise. The report exposes a record of badly kept training and safety procedure records for its employees, including drivers, inadequate crew inspections, and other troubling issues at the company. The report is all the more disturbing when you consider that the company, a division of the French giant Veolia Environment, has a presence all across the country, running commuter rails, bus systems and taxi companies in Texas, Boston, Connecticut, Denver etc. The company has an especially strong presence in California.

As the report mentions, it has run into problems in several of these cities. In Boston’s commuter rail service, the company has been criticized for late trains and malfunctioning cooling systems. But, the really shocking violations are in California, where the company is facing a class action lawsuit that alleges that it did not give bus drivers a proper meal beak. Drivers are often forced to drive with their lunch balanced on their laps, the lawsuit alleges!

As we have noted in our other Metrolink accident lawyers blog, it’s clear that employee well-being, and consequently passenger safety, is not high on Veolia’s priority list. Veolia needs to answer as to why it should not be held accountable for the LA Metrolink train accident.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Orlando Sentinel has a story that compares SoCal’s commuter rail service, and the proposed Central Florida commuter rail service in the light of the September 12th Metrolink train accident in Los Angeles.

There are some interesting differences in the Central Florida project, and the rail service that we have in southern California that should serve as a lesson to legislators looking to enforce stricter safety measures. For one, the rail system in Central Florida provides for tracks to be used exclusively by commuter trains during peak times. Compare this to the Metrolink service we have in Los Angeles, where freight trains and commuter trains frequently operate on the same tracks, even during rush hour. Also, the Central Florida system is double tracked in large portions, which make these trains safer. The Metrolink train accident in Los Angeles occurred on a single track line.

In the case of the Los Angeles train accident, initial evidence shows that the engineer at the controls ran a stop light leading to the collision. The newspaper calls for better standards, trained crew, and up-to-date technology to make the possibility of human error in Florida commuter trains redundant.

For the 25 passengers who died in the Chatsworth Metrolink train accident, talk of rail safety is too little, too late. However, we can make improvements on the haphazard way things have been done in the past to ensure that such train accidents never occur again. The unfortunate train accident of September 12th seems to be forcing a lot of people all over the country to look close and hard at their own commuter train services, and that’s a good thing.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

As we reported on our Metrolink accident attorney blog, the Metrolink Board of Directors met to discuss rail safety measures in the wake of the Metrolink train crash in Los Angeles. Now, new reports of the meeting on Friday have confirmed that the Board has agreed to equip trains with Automatic Train Stop (ATS) technology. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority in its meeting on Thursday had agreed to funnel $5 million to equip trains with ATS systems that would act to prevent or reduce the severity of train accidents.

The ATS technology will be used as an interim safety measure while the board looks into the feasibility of installing the more advanced and more expensive positive train control technology. The House this week passed a rail reform bill that includes provisions for installing positive train control systems that make use of GPS technology to detect trains that have missed stop lights or are on a collision course with another train. When a situation like this arises, the brakes are applied automatically, with no input from the engineer at the controls.

Metrolink officials admit that the ATS system is not as effective as the positive train control technology, and the system itself dates back to the fifties. But it is less expensive than positive train control technology.

Other decisions taken at Friday’s board meeting also included the setting up of a committee of rail safety experts who would make short-term as well as long-term recommendations for safety.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

While we have discussed the opinions of almost everybody connected to rails on our Metrolink accident attorneys blog, we have yet to hear anything concrete from the bosses at Metrolink themselves. Metrolink Chef Executive David R. Solow has kept a deliberately low profile since the deadly train crash, and has left his subordinates to do the defending for him.

On Thursday, the Metrolink chief finally spoke at length about his plans for rail safety in the aftermath of the train crash in Los Angeles on September 12th. He admitted that his agency was considering the installation of automatic stop technology that has been proposed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board of directors, as we have reported on our other Metrolink train accident lawyers blog.

Solow was speaking at the MTA board meeting, and voiced his doubts about whether the automatic stop system could actually help prevent the kind of train accident that occurred on September 12th. He also said he didn’t know if the Metrolink train accident could actually have been prevented, but conceded that the system was better than nothing at all.

From the little that the news reports have mentioned of his statement, it doesn’t seem as if the chief is in any hurry to do anything concrete about rail safety. He thinks automatic stop technology won’t stop or prevent fatal train accidents like the Chatsworth Metrolink train crash, but says it’s “better than nothing.” Our citizens should be worth more than a system that is better than nothing at all. His obstinate opposition to positive train control technology, because as he claims, it’s too expensive and too unproven, has cost 25 people their lives, and that’s unforgivable.

On this Metrolink accident lawyers blog, we‘re still waiting for some semblance of leadership from Mr. Solow.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

Barely two weeks since the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, and the much vaunted rail reforms bill that has just recently been passed in the house is already seeing voices of disagreement.

Oklahoma’s Republican Senator Tom Coburn is not too impressed with a proposal in the bill that would increase funding for Amtrak’s passenger rail service. The cost for the package which amounts to a total of $14 billion over five years, Senator Coburn says, is the main reason that he has reservations about the bill. It doesn’t help that the bill is making the rounds in both houses of Congress around the same time that another bill, this one proposing $700 billion of taxpayers’ money to bail out Wall Street. Coburn insists that now is the time for strict fiscal discipline.

The rail reforms bill includes provisions for the implementation of positive train control technology to avoid train accidents like the Los Angeles Metrolink train crash of September 12th. Other safety provisions include revisions of rail worker schedules, and provision for more federal railroad inspectors.

On Wednesday, transportation leaders agreed on negotiations about the rail package. Supporters of increased funding for Amtrak’s passenger rail service hoped that the path to a clearance in both the House and Senate would be smoother if rail safety provisions were introduced as a response to the Metrolink train crash. Senator Coburn has also blocked a House-Senate conference earlier this year that aimed at ironing out differences between two separate Amtrak bills that had been passed by both houses.

The repackaged legislation was passed by the House on Wednesday, and it was hoped that it would clear the Senate by the end of the week. Mr. Coburn’s’ objections however, seem to have cast a temporary glitch in the proceedings. Lawmakers however, insisted that they were confident of getting around Mr. Coburn’s’ objections.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board will meet today to discuss support for rail safety measures in the aftermath of the Metrolink train accident at Chatsworth on September 12th.

The MTA is one of five county transit agencies that funds Metrolink, and is the largest and the biggest financial benefactor of the rail company. The motions being considered at today’s meeting will include improvements that Metrolink needs to make. These include installing of anti-collision technology that could stop a train automatically if it is in danger of an accident, and adding second engineers to its locomotives. The motions will also call for video cameras to be placed in the cab of its engines to monitor the activity of the drivers.

Of these proposals, Metrolink has already said that it will consider the feasibility of having a second engineer on its locomotives. There is no telling yet whether Metrolink will agree to this set of proposals.

The most important of these proposals, and one that could receive wide support, is the one that calls for installing of positive train control systems on tracks. Currently, the only tracks that have the system installed are in south Orange County. MTA officials expected to be at the meeting today have been vocal about their insistence that Metrolink act quickly to adopt this technology on all tracks.

The House just passed a bill that would have tracks equipped with the new system by 2015. California lawmakers are trying hard to bring that deadline ahead to 2012. Metrolink, with other rail companies, is resisting any mandatory deadline set by Congress.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

In the wake of allegations that text messaging could be at the core of the Los Angeles Metrolink train crash that killed 25 people in Chatsworth, a new ban on texting while driving will go into effect on January 1.

The bill has been signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and bans receiving, sending and reading text message on electronic devices while driving. California thus joins a small, but growing, list of states that are putting the brakes on text messaging while driving.

That text messaging, or for that matter using your cell phone, can be a distraction is a fact. When soon after the Los Angeles Metrolink train crash of September 12th, a teenage boy made allegations that he had been exchanging text messages with the engineer at the controls, Robert Sanchez, on the ill-fated train, NTSB began to explore that angle as one of the causes of the train accident. Sanchez’s cell phone records on the day of the train crash were obtained, and it was found hat he had indeed been texting while at the controls. How much of a factor this was in causing the deadly train accident will be learned later.

The California Public Utilities Commission was one of the first to accept that cell phone use by train operators wasn’t a good idea, and placed an immediate ban on cell phone use by certain train crew members on a moving train.

The Metrolink train crash that has occupied national media attention over the past nearly two weeks now had placed increased attention on the practice of text messaging. We always knew that it was an unacceptable practice behind the wheel. As it turned out, it’s just as unacceptable at the controls of a train.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

As we’ve reported on our other Metrolink train accident lawyer blog today, a Senate hearing was held on Tuesday to discuss the Los Angeles Metrolink train crash that occurred on September 12th. Top officials of Metrolink made an appearance to answer questions from senators, including California’s senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

The mood in the hall was definitely tense as both Senators Feinstein and Boxer made their displeasure at the recent Los Angeles train accident, and the large number of fatalities involved, very evident. The two repeatedly chastised Metrolink and Union Pacific railroad officials. Officials from the Federal Railroad Administration also received the full ire of Senator Feinstein’s anger for their part in failing to prevent the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident in Chatsworth.

FRA administrator Robert Boardman, Metrolink chief Ron Roberts and Dennis Duffy, Executive VP of Operations at Union Pacific - none of the men were spared the brunt of the two senators’ anger, especially when it came to the question of installing positive train control technology on tracks. Boardman was chastised for his failure to issue an emergency order to improve rail safety measures in the wake of the deadly September 12th Metrolink train crash, with Senator Boxer going so far as to charge him with lacking the will to do anything about rail safety.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Senator Dianne Feinstein, never one to mince words, was particularly scathing in her criticism of the Federal Railroad Administration, calling the agency, as she left the hearing, an “old boys club” who were prone to doing whatever the railroads wanted.

It’s unfortunate that these agencies that are responsible for the safety of so many passengers on a daily basis need to have their actions monitored by Senators. It’s high time the FRA begins to act like the accountable agency that it is, instead of having to be reprimanded by lawmakers every time there is a train accident.

If you have been injured or a loved-one has been killed in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident, contact The Reeves Law Group. The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.