Eye Nosh: Is This the Best Pastrami in America?
Zenyatta Makes "Her"Story
-thumb-110x110-455795.jpg)
Build Your Own BBQ for Under 10 Bucks!
Pixies 'Doolittle' @ The Palladium 11/4/09
Stadium to the Sea: LA Marathon Releases 2010 Course Map
Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist
National Transportation Safety Board investigators released information this afternoon regarding Metrolink Engineer Robert Sanchez' cell phone records. He sent 29 text messages while on duty the day of the crash with the last one sent at 4:22:01 p.m. The However, the NTSB says precise timing of cell phone activity and how it correlates with the crash is still under investigation. According to preliminary estimates, the crash occurred at 4:22:23 pm.
The September 12th crash between the Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific Freight train killed 25 people, including Sanchez, and injured 135. One day after the crash, CBS2 had an exclusive announcing that Sanchez was possibly texting before the crash, which led to investigators subpoenaing his cell phone records.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
The 20 second thing doesn't get him off the hook. It could likely mean that he was not actually texting at the time but perhaps was reading the response. Ugh. Such a tragedy.
So he sends a text message and now Metrolink isn't responsible for two trains heading toward each other on the same track?
ka... that's how the train system works. Professionals are hired to operate trains and pay attention while operating them to ensure that trains sharing the track do not hit each other. This worked fine on the Ventura County Line for 16 years until one so called professional clearly decided that the bare minimum requirement of his job (paying attention) was less important than his text messaging. PAYING ATTENTION AND DRIVING THE TRAIN CARRYING HUNDREDS OF PASSENGERS IS HIS GODDAMN JOB. It's clear as day now that this accident would have been avoided if this man was DOING HIS GODDAMN JOB. How many millions/billions do you think we should spend so that professional train operators don't have to be burdened by the stress of doing their job.
That the engineer was texting does not get Metrolink or Veolia off the hook.
Certainly Metrolink and Veolia are not of the hook, they still hired this incompetent engineer and allowed cell phone use while operating a train, but it has nothing to do with "two trains heading toward each other on the same track" or "lack of PTC".
Train coming right for me. LOL. WTF?