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Personal injuries or death caused by an accident are often caused by somebody else’s negligence. On July 27, 2010, the National Transportation Safety Board announced that a faulty electronic circuit that caused a deadly 2009 Metro crash in Washington was symptomatic of an “anemic safety culture” at the D.C. area’s transit agency, according to a recent Associated Press news report.

Eight passengers and a train operator were killed in June 2009 when a Metrorail train rear-ended a second-train stopped before the Fort Totten station. As expected, the NTSB concluded that the collision occurred because Metro’s automatic signal system failed to detect the presence of the stopped train. The operator of the approaching train was told to continue traveling at 55 mph. She pulled the emergency brake, but the train was still traveling at more than 40 mph at the moment of the collision.

More broadly, the NTSB said Metro ignored repeated warning signs and fostered a culture of indifference to chronic safety issues. The agency was warned about deficiencies in its safety department for 15 years before the crash, NTSB chairwoman Deborah Hersman said.

“If they don’t listen this time, I’m not sure what else can be done here,” Hershman said. “There’s got to be some action; there’s got to be some change. There needs to be better oversight.”

The NTSB faulted Metro’s board of directors for failing to actively monitor safety issues. The track signaling system failed to recognize trains 3,000 times a week, but the issue was deemed a minor nuisance, the NTSB said.

In her opening remarks, Hersman said the Fort Totten station crash was not the first time Metro’s safety system was compromised. Previous accidents, some of which killed employees, foreshadowed the deadlier crash, she said.

“Because the necessary preventive measures were not taken, the only question was when would Metro have another accident and of what magnitude,” Hersman said.

On January 21, 2010, The Baltimore Sun reported that the Maryland Board of Public Works approved a $1.5 million settlement in the case of two teenagers who were hit and killed by a light rail train in July in Lutherville, Maryland.

The two teenage boys, both 17, were fatally struck July 5 by a northbound train while walking along the tracks that are normally used for southbound operations. The Maryland Transit Administration had switched northbound traffic onto the tracks because of an earlier act of vandalism on the northbound tracks. The operator of the train that struck the boys apparently did not notice them on the tracks and did not stop the train. Another train later passed the scene of the accident without noticing the bodies on the tracks. The bodies were later discovered by a fare inspector from a third train that came upon the scene.

Maryland Transit Administration Police began an investigation, but Baltimore County police took over at the request of relatives of the victims. While the county police ruled the boys’ deaths an accident and no criminal charges were filed, an MTA internal investigation led to the firing of two train operators and disciplinary action against six other employees.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Federal investigators concluded in draft findings presented in Washington that the Metrolink train in the 2008 Chatsworth catastrophe ran a red light and that the accident would not have happened if the passenger train engineer had stopped as required. Investigators have said telephone records indicate the Metrolink engineer was text messaging on a cellphone at the time of the accident.

The National Transportation Safety Board is continuing to discuss the findings, but agency staff said it concluded that witnesses who said the signal appeared to be green were not reliable. The approximately one-mile distance to the signal from the station, where the witnesses were located, combined with lighting conditions and human limitations contributed to the finding, officials said.

Testing and records from various signals, the system dispatch center and video from the Union Pacific freight train that collided with Metrolink 111 all support the conclusion that the final signal passed by the commuter train was red, officials said.

The draft findings also concluded that if high-tech collision avoidance technology had been in place, it would have intervened and prevented the accident, according to the NTSB staff.