Cause of two train crashes identical – and preventable
Two train crashes within 13 weeks of each other – one in New Jersey and the other in New York – had the same root causes, says the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB): the undiagnosed sleep apnea of the trains’ engineers. Sleep apnea is a potentially serious sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts. It can result in a sufferer feeling tired even after a full night's sleep.
In both accidents, the engineers failed to stop their trains before reaching the end of a terminating track at a station. The September 29, 2016, accident on the New Jersey Transit commuter railroad at Hoboken, New Jersey, killed one person, injured 110, and resulted in major damage to the passenger station. The January 4, 2017, accident on the Long Island Rail Road (a subsidiary of Metropolitan Transportation Authority) at the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn, New York, injured 108 people.