The Metro-North train that derailed on Sunday morning was traveling 42 miles per hour above the speed limit when it jumped the tracks at a curve near the Bronx's Spuyten Duyvil station, National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener announced in a press hearing.
According to the NTSB's analysis of two “black box” event recorders located on the damaged passenger train, the locomotive was going 82 mph when the speed limit is 30 mph, and reduced its velocity to idle only six seconds before it came to a stop. Metro-North regulations state trains may travel up to 75 mph when nearing the curve.
A third-party claims adjuster with more than 40 years of experience in the railroad industry told PC360 yesterday that insurance fallout from a derailment may involve excess liability, wrongful death, property damage and rolling stock damage claims against the railroad company. Most railroads are self-insured for this kind of coverage, he said, and a Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) spokeswoman confirms the company is self-insured up to $25 million.
Passenger train claims would mostly involve personal injuries, and the insured cost of such an event can go into the millions, says the adjuster, depending on the range of injuries. Officials say some of the victims of the weekend's crash suffered compound fractures, and one person may be paralyzed from the waist down.
The Metro-North train was operating in “push” mode, or with the locomotive at its rear, which the TPA says tends to involve more personal injuries when an accident occurs.
Brake pressure dropped from 120 psi to 0 psi five seconds before the rear-mounted engine stopped, or “very late in the game,” said Weener. In a previous testimony, engineer William Rockefeller said the brakes did not work when he tried to halt the train. The NTSB is now investigating how the brakes performed at the nine stops the train made prior to Spuyten Duyvil.
Weener says the train's position, power setting, and other factors must be considered–including a low-quality surveillance video of the train that must be enhanced–prior to determining whether the accident that killed four and injured more than 70 occurred due to human error or a faulty breaking system.
Rockefeller, who has been driving trains for two decades with no known safety violations, was in the front of the car and told his supervisors that he tried to reduce speed before approaching the bend in the tracks to no avail.
Weener said the NTSB knows of no anomalies with the brakes on the train in question.
“I'm not an expert in this field, but working with the experts over the past day, I think it's going to be speed-related,” New York Governor Cuomo told the Today show on Monday.
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