Rail operator's actions questioned in Calif. crash

[July 20, 2009]  SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Federal investigators are trying to find out why the operator of a San Francisco light-rail that crashed into a parked train and injured dozens of passengers had turned off the automatic controls moments before the collision.

Had he kept the autopilot on, the train would have slowed down before arriving at the West Portal Station and likely not careened into the other train while going 23 mph, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Ted Turpin said Sunday. He added that the operator never engaged the emergency brake.

Turpin said a mechanical inspection of the train that caused the accident has so far not uncovered any problems.

The crash on Saturday afternoon injured 48 people, four seriously, in the latest in a series of commuter train wrecks in recent months in the U.S. None of the injuries were life-threatening.

A chaotic scene unfolded after the westbound train struck the end of the other train at a boarding platform. The operator was pinned inside his damaged compartment, said San Francisco Fire Lt. Ken Smith.

"He was in the front of the train, and part of it was pushed into him," Smith said. "Rescuers had to pry open the doors to get to him and assist him out of the light rail vehicle."

Neither Turpin nor local transit officials would identify the driver, but said he started as a San Francisco bus driver in 1979 and switched to light rail in 2007. He was hospitalized after the crash and a drug test had been administered, which was standard procedure for crashes.

Investigators will interview the operators to determine the cause, and Turpin said they would look at whether cell phone use played a factor in the crash, as is standard in all train accident investigations.

It was the fourth major subway or commuter rail accident in the last 10 months.

In September, a commuter rail train crashed with a freight rail in Los Angeles and 25 people died. The crash was blamed on an engineer on the commuter rail texting on a cell phone. About 50 people were injured in Boston in May when a trolley rear-ended another trolley. The conductor admitted to texting when the crash took place. And last month, a subway train rear-ended another in Washington during rush hour, killing nine people.

In the San Francisco crash, two Los Angeles-based NTSB investigators are working with transit officials to interview passengers, witnesses and focus on assessing the condition of the train tracks, signal systems and the structural integrity of the train cars involved. Also, investigators had not finished looking at whether the signaling system played a role.

Ercan Bektas, 27, who works at a cafe near the intersection of the crash site, said he was finishing his shift Saturday when he "heard something like a bomb."

"There was smoke coming out of one car. I went to help and I saw the car crushed," he said.

Rail service in the city has resumed since the site was cleared. More than 200 million passengers take San Francisco's mass-transit system, which the city's famous cable cars and historic trolleys.

[Associated Press; By JASON DEAREN]

Associated Press writers Evelyn Nieves and Tim Reiterman contributed to this report.

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