(Bloomberg) — The third fatal Amtrak crash in less than two months has thrown a spotlight on delays in installing congressionally mandated technology designed to automatically slow trains and prevent collisions.
|New system work
In the most recent episode, work to install the new system, known as Positive Train Control, might itself have contributed to the crash outside Columbia, South Carolina, on Sunday, federal officials said. Employees had temporarily lowered the safety protections on the set of tracks where an Amtrak train en route from New York to Miami rammed into a parked CSX Corp. freight train.
Two Amtrak employees died and more than 100 people were hurt.
The collision would not have occurred if a PTC system had been functioning there, said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB said the same thing after an Amtrak train derailed near DuPont, Washington, on Dec. 18 when an engineer failed to slow down for a curve, killing three people. PTC would have sensed where the train was and automatically slowed before it reached the curve.
|'People are dying'
"People are dying," U.S. Representative Sean Maloney, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. "We can't wait any longer on getting PTC systems up and running nationwide. Congress has delayed this deadline time and again and we've seen the deadly results."
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