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The
engineer then applied the brakes but apparently not the
emergency brake, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
said in a statement after retrieving and reviewing data from the
data recorder and inward- and outward-facing cameras.
Monday's crash south of Seattle killed three people and sent
about 100 others to hospitals. All 12 cars and one of the two
engines jumped the tracks at a curve, sending some cars tumbling
from a bridge onto an interstate highway.
The board previously said the train was going about 80 miles per
hour (129 km per hour) in a 30-mph zone. On Friday it said the
final recorded speed of the locomotive was 78 mph.
The train's video cameras were damaged in the crash but
investigators were able to download the contents with the
manufacturer's help at the NTSB lab in Washington, the board
said in a statement.
"About six seconds prior to the derailment, the engineer made a
comment regarding an over speed condition," the board said.
"The engineer's actions were consistent with the application of
the locomotive's brakes just before the recording ended. It did
not appear the engineer placed the brake handle in
emergency-braking mode," the board said.
The cameras did not show the crew using any personal electronic
devices, the board said. Such use is of interest since a
Southern California Metrolink commuter train crashed into a
freight train in 2008, killing 25 people and injuring 111
others. The board determined the engineer was distracted by text
messaging.
Amtrak President Richard Anderson on Friday urged faster
national rollout of another safety measure, Positive Train
Control (PTC), that can automatically slow speeding trains and
might have prevented the Washington accident.
PTC must be installed on all U.S. trains and tracks by the end
of 2018. It was not operational on the track, owned by the Sound
Transit commuter rail, where the Amtrak train derailed.
"It is imperative that the rail industry urgently work together
to get PTC activated on the national network as soon as
possible, and certainly by the December 2018 federal deadline,
if not before," Anderson said in a statement.
About half of Amtrak's locomotives and two-thirds of its track
had PTC as of June, U.S. data show.
(Reporting by Daniel Trotta in New York; Editing by Jeffrey
Benkoe and Susan Thomas)
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