More revelations in the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident are being made every day. Just a couple of days ago, we reported on our Metrolink train crash lawyers blog that the red light that engineer Robert Sanchez was alleged to have run was poor in visibility. Now, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that a conductor on the train has told investigators that the light was not red at all, but green.

This corresponds to the observations of witnesses, including a few rail fans, that the signal light that the train passed just before it crashed head-on into a Union Pacific freight train was not red at all, but green. However, this had been refuted by Metrolink, which insisted that there was nothing wrong with its light system, and pinpointed the blame on Sanchez.

Sanchez’s failure to stop at the red light has been the subject of much scrutiny. It has been tied to his texting messages on his cell phone to a rail fan on the journey of Train 111. Initially, that was believed to have been the reason why the engineer missed a red light. Investigators had also been focusing their probe on the failure to follow train signal announcement protocol. Rules require engineers and conductors to call out the red signals as they see them, so one person is always in a position to stop the train even if the engineer does not. On board Train 111, no such calls were recorded, and now, with this new allegation that the signal light was not red, but green, we might finally have an answer to why Sanchez failed to stop at the signal.

It’s not just Metrolink that insists that its signal system was functioning properly, and that there was no way there could have been a green light just before the train crash. The NTSB too in its preliminary findings, maintained that the signal light had been red, and Sanchez had failed to spot it or had failed to stop for whatever reason. The NTSB maintains that the signal system had been tested by investigators soon after the accident, and had been found to be functioning properly.

As the investigations into one of California’s worst rail disasters continue, things seem to be getting more and more tangled. It will be a while before investigations wrap up, and we get a complete picture of what really transpired aboard the train in those fateful seconds before the accident. If what the conductor says about the signal light is true, then for Sanchez’s family which has been battling with allegations that his negligence was responsible for the 25 deaths that occurred in the train crash, it will be a huge vindication of his innocence. It will prove that he was not at fault at all.

Metrolink has seemed to be in too much of a hurry to pin the blame for the train accident on Sanchez. The accident has attracted attention from dozens of Metrolink train accident lawyers, and the agency no doubt, wants to keep its culpability to the absolute minimum.

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.

Less than three months after the devastating Metrolink train accident in Chatsworth, California, another crash involving a commuter train and freight train about a half mile from the Rialto station, sent five persons to the hospital with complaints of pain. The commuter train hit the end of a Northern Burlington Santa Fe Railway train.

The scenario was eerily similar to the one that occurred on September 12th near Chatsworth when a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train crashed into each other. 25 people died in the crash, one of the worst in the state’s commuter train history. Several were sent to the hospital with catastrophic injuries in the crash that was later linked to the driver of the Metrolink commuter train missing a stop signal just before the train accident. Investigations into the driver’s cell phone records after the accident revealed that he had been sending text messages to a rail fan just seconds before the crash. Investigations in that train accident are still on.

Thursday’s train accident must have seemed to commuters like a replay of September’s tragedy. According to a spokesperson for Burlington Northern, the freight train driver had been given the go ahead, although it wasn’t clear whether the go ahead had been given by a signal or a dispatcher. In the September crash too, the driver missed a stop signal, although the reason for this still hasn’t been confirmed.

The crash occurred on a track that is owned and maintained by Metrolink, just like the one that occurred in September. This accident was markedly minor in its impact. For one, it was a side swipe, and not the kind of devastating head on accident that killed so many in September. There was no damage either to the freight car or the passenger coaches. September’s tragedy had crushed the first few passenger cars of the commuter train. Cars had been bunched up together like an accordion. In this recent train accident, only the last passenger car suffered some minor damage.

At least five commuters were taken to the hospital after they complained of pain, but no severe injuries were reported. The train was reported to be traveling at a low speed at the time of the accident, which might account for the lack of damage. As a response to the September train crash, there were two engineers present on board the commuter train.

Metrolink officials are making the usual promises of safety features. Board Vice Chairman Keith Millhouse announced that although the accident had occurred at a low speed, the agency would still treat investigations seriously to “ensure that incidents like this do not happen again.” Within the agency, awareness is high that Metrolink’s poor safety record is drawing attention among rail authorities around the country. Fortunately, there was very little damage, and not severe injuries in this accident, but the agency has a pitiful safety record with the highest fatality rates of all similar sized commuter rails in the country. Even some of the bigger networks like Chicago and Massachusetts commuter rail have had fewer train accidents than Metrolink, which carries fewer passengers than these rails.

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 a deadly Sacramento bus accident over the weekend, a charter bus flipped over and fell into a ditch on a rural two-lane road near Sacramento, California. Initial news reports coming in have put the death toll at 10, with at least 36 people injured in the bus accident.

The bus, with Greyhound bus markings, is believed to be owned by a Texas-based company; and was on its way from Sacramento to the Colusa Casino Resort.

The bus was carrying 46 passengers, some of them non-English speaking people of Laotian descent, on their way to the casino for a weekend of fun. About 60 miles north of Sacramento, near Williams, California, the bus driver, for some reason, let the bus veer off the road, and continued for half a mile before over-correcting. This caused the bus to roll over, ejecting several of the passengers before landing on its side in a ditch off the road. The bus crash occurred at 6:10 pm on Sunday.

The ditch was filled with water, and was covered with tall weeds, making rescue operations for the firefighters and rescue teams who arrived at the scene of the accident, a difficult job. Infrared sensors were used to look for survivors, but as early as this morning, rescue teams were satisfied that they had accounted for all passengers. The fact that many of the passengers spoke only Lao made rescue efforts more challenging as they couldn’t communicate with team members.

According to rescue teams, the bus was damaged severely, its body had been smashed, and it had rolled over completely, and was facing the opposite direction. The driver hasn’t been identified yet, nor has the name of the charter company that owns the bus been released. The bus however, did have a Texas license plate, but the registration number seems to be invalid. According to California Highway Patrol, other registration serial numbers that they checked also seemed to come up invalid.

We shouldn’t be too surprised if the web of lies and deceit, that has come to be associated with many Texas-based bus companies, which often employ dubious means to work around the revoking of their suspension records. The fact that’s there is no valid license plate is not an encouraging sign, and we can expect further investigations into this Sacramento bus accident to raise more surprises.

The intensity of the Sacramento bus crash can be gauged in the number of deaths and injuries involved. In the past months, we have reported on several bus accidents involving Texas-based companies which had poor worker inspection standards and fleet maintenance policies. As we wait for further details about the driver of the bus here, there are several questions that beg to be addressed: What was the worker schedule like at the company that owned the charter bus? Was driver fatigue a cause here? How did he manage to let a bus veer off the side of the road for a half mile? There are many questions to be asked, and as the hours progress, we should have more answers about how this Sacramento bus accident occurred.

At our Sacramento bus accident lawyer blog, we wish the survivors of the crash a speedy and complete recovery.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of bus 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 yesterday on our Metrolink train accident lawyers blog, the Federal Railroad Administration has passed an immediate order that bans use of cell phones and other electronic devices by certain railroad crews, like engineers who are in charge of sensitive activities aboard a moving train.

The order came as a response to the confirmation released by the NTSB that the engineer at the control of the train was texting as late as 20 seconds before the Metrolink train accident that occurred near Chatsworth. The cell phone ban has however, come a full 9 years after the Federal Railroad Administration first began to consider imposing such a ban.

The order lists a series of train accidents that have resulted from cell phone use by key personnel on trains, like train operators and engineers. Earlier this year, a brakeman was killed when he was crossing the tracks, and was hit by a train. Another accident involved a head-on train crash between two trains in Texas.

Even as news of Robert Sanchez’s text messaging during the ill-fated journey was making news, the FRA continued to hem and haw about imposing a total ban on cell phones. They insisted that a ban like this was already in force at Metrolink, although that ban doesn’t seem to have prevented Sanchez from reaching for his cell phone while he was at the controls. A total cell phone ban was also, the FRA claimed, difficult to enforce.

All those arguments seem to have gone flying out the window after the media yesterday ran with the news that Sanchez had sent a text message just 20 seconds before the Metrolink commuter train collided with a freight train. In addition, he had sent more than 55 messages in all, over a course of two shifts.

In other Metrolink train accident news, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villagairosa has honored a group of rescuers who stepped up at a time of crises. The group includes a minister, city officials, as well as residents of nearby areas who rushed to help those trapped in the wrecked train. Acts of help ranged from actually pulling out the physically injured from the train wreck, to pulling out cushions from the shattered train so that the injured could lie on a soft cushion, instead of hard ground outside.

For instance, Reverend Donald Ashman wasted no time in the first few seconds after the train crash, praying for those who were seriously injured or dying. Residents of nearby suburbs jumped fences to get to the victims of the train crash. These heroes, and others like them, were honored at a Mid-Valley Community Police Council luncheon on Thursday. Mayor Villagairosa heaped praise on the heroes of September 12th, and said that he was proud of the way they had responded to the Metrolink 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 US Senate has passed a sweeping rail safety bill that has gained urgency since the Metrolink train crash in Los Angeles.  On Wednesday, members voted 74-24 in favor of the bill which will also make available funding of $13 billion to financially-troubled Amtrak over a five-year period.

But, the most important provisions of the bill for Metrolink train accident lawyers are the ones related to rail safety which were introduced in the bill as a response to the deadly train accident that occurred in Chatsworth last month. It was one of the county’s worst commuter train disasters, and it was definitely preventable.  Twenty-five people died, including the engineer Robert Sanchez, who was blamed for having failed to stop at three stop signals.  At least 130 people were rushed to the hospital, more than 80 of them with severe injuries.

The bill now goes to the White House for President Bush’s signature, but the amount of support that the bill has garnered in Congress suggests that any veto possibility is likely to be overturned. President Bush had been opposed to the Amtrak bill in its earlier version, before the train accident of September 12th, and in fact, in April this year, he had threatened to veto the rail bill.

It would have been hard to reject the bill in its present form, with its emphasis on improved rail safety measures that aim to help prevent train accidents, and reduce the number of fatalities that occur due to human error.  With this rail safety legislation assuming immediacy in the wake of the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident in Chatsworth, it became more difficult for legislators, even those who were opposed to increased funding for Amtrak, to put up any opposition to the bill. The media, citizen interest groups and Metrolink train accident lawyers have been relentless in their scrutiny of the long list of things done wrong at Metrolink after the tragic accident at Chatsworth. In a situation like this, opposing a bill that includes far-reaching and unprecedented rail safety measures wasn’t an option for most lawmakers.

The most important provision of the bill, which assumes significance in the backdrop of the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident is the one that calls for anti-collision systems on more railroads by the year 2015. Also known as positive control system, this technology makes use of GPS systems and sensors to automatically apply the brakes on a train when an engineer fails to stop at stop signals. Rail safety experts are almost unanimous in their agreement that the train accident of September 12th could almost certainly have been avoided if positive train control technology had been in place on the track.

The bill also makes provisions to take care of the long-held complaint of rail worker fatigue. The bill caps rail worker shifts at 12 hours, and provides mandatory 10-hour rest periods for train crews and signal employees.

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 rail safety bill that assumed urgency after the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident in Los Angeles is set to be passed by the Senate on Wednesday. The bill contains amended safety legislations, and as we had earlier reported on our Metrolink train accident attorney blog, the bill had cleared a final key vote that would end all debate, and prevent any attempts to delay passing of the bill.

The bill was passed by the House of Representatives last week. The bill contains a number of Amtrak-related provisions, including authorizing new funding for Amtrak to the tune of $5.3 billion in capital grants, $2.9 billion operating grants, and $1.9 billion for intercity passenger rail to be paid out over the next five years. However, the part of the bill that’s of special concern to Metrolink train accident lawyers is the provision for mandatory installing of sensors to detect trains on the same track, and prevent train accidents. That particular provision is what had grabbed the attention of the public and media, and has spurred lawmakers into quick action.

The accident that occurred on September 12th at Chatsworth, a Los Angeles suburb, was apparently caused by an engineers’ failure to stop at the stop signals. The result was that the Metrolink commuter train ended up on the same track as the Union Pacific freight train. The resulting collision killed 25 people, and left at least 130 people injured, many of them with severe and life-threatening injuries.

Rail safety experts who have been calling for positive train control systems that make use of GPS technology to locate and detect the movement of trains that have failed to stop at stop lights, and stop them by applying the brakes automatically, have maintained that the Los Angeles Metrolink train accident could have been averted if positive train control technology had been in place on high-risk tracks. High-risk tracks are those that are used by both freight trains and commuter trains. In this particular train cash, the technology could have resulted in the brakes being automatically applied, and preventing an accident.

Other provisions in the bill call for limiting the number of hours that rail workers have to work a day, as well as regulating training schedules for employees. Not all is completely clear yet, though. The bill even if passed by the Senate, faces a firm critic in President Bush. He had been opposed to an earlier bill, without the rail safety legislation that made it into the bill language after the Metrolink train crash in Los Angeles. The White House is firmly opposed to the kind of spending that the bill entails.

The provisions for additional funding for Amtrak have found special critics among lawmakers, and in fact, proponents of the Amtrak provisions made haste to include these new safety provisions in the bill to ensure that it would have a smooth passage in the Senate. Now is really not the time to bicker and complain. 25 people have lost their lives because of all the dilly-dallying on rail safety in this country, and more could be lost in future if the bill is not signed as soon as possible.

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.

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.