From: de-blasfail@nyc.com

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VALHALLA, N.Y. (AP) u The baffling behavior of a woman whose SUV
stopped between the crossing gates on a railroad track came
under scrutiny Wednesday as investigators sought clues to a
fiery commuter train crash that killed six people.

National Transportation Safety Board officials were looking at
the Metro-North train's black-box-style recorders, seeking to
learn its speed, whether brakes were applied and whether it
sounded its horn as it approached the suburban New York crossing
where it slammed into the SUV, NTSB vice chairman Robert Sumwalt
said.

"We intend to find out not only what happened, but we want to
find out why it happened," he said at the site of Tuesday
evening's rush-hour collision in Valhalla, about 20 miles north
of New York City.

Later Wednesday, Sen. Charles Schumer said early indications are
that the train was going 58 mph, or within the 60-to-70-mph
speed limit that area.

Investigators also planned to look at the track signals'
recording devices, interview the train's operators, peer into
the wreckage with laser-scanning devices and seek aerial
footage, he said.

Meanwhile, officials were using dental records to identify the
badly burned victims u five men on the train and the SUV driver,
officials said. Several others remained hospitalized, at least
two with critical or serious injuries.

It was the deadliest accident in the 22-year history of one of
the nation's busiest commuter railroads u one that has come
under a harsh spotlight over a series of accidents in recent
years.

"It's really inexplicable, based on the facts we have now," Gov.
Andrew Cuomo said on WCBS-AM radio.

The wreck happened after dark in heavy traffic in an area where
the tracks are straight but driving can be tricky. Motorists
exiting or entering the adjacent Taconic Parkway have to turn
and cross the tracks near a wooded area and a cemetery.

The driver had gotten out of her Mercedes SUV momentarily after
the crossing's safety gates came down around her and hit her
car, according to the driver behind her, Rick Hope.

"I said to myself, 'The clock is ticking here, the gate is down,
the bells are ringing u what are you going to do here?'" he told
WNYW-TV. "She looked a little confused, gets back in the car and
pulls forward" on the tracks.

Traffic was moving slowly at the time, choked with drivers
seeking to avoid the Taconic Parkway because of an accident, he
noted.

"It looks like she stopped where she stopped because she didn't
want to go on the tracks," Hope added. "It was dark, so maybe
she didn't know she was in front of the gate."

Railroad grade crossings typically have gate arms designed to
lift automatically if they hit a car or other object on the way
down, railroad safety consultant Grady Cothen said. The wooden
arms are designed to be easily broken if a car trapped between
them moves forward or backward, he said.

As of Wednesday morning, transit officials hadn't found any
problems with the tracks or signal, Westchester County Executive
Rob Astorino said.

It was not the first deadly crash at the site: A Metro-North
train hit a truck, killing its driver, at the same Commerce
Street crossing in 1984, according to Federal Railroad
Administration records.

Rep. Patrick Maloney, D-N.Y, said Tuesday's accident underscores
the need for positive train control, a technology that uses WiFi
and GPS to monitor trains' exact position and automatically
applies the brakes to prevent collisions or lessen their
severity. While not specifically designed to address grade-
crossing accidents, the technology can be expanded for such
purposes, he said.

Congress passed a 2008 law that requires all railroads to
install positive train control by the end of 2015, but it's
clear most of them will not meet the deadline.

The crash was so powerful that the electrified third rail came
up and pierced the train, and the SUV was pushed about 400 feet.
Cuomo said the SUV's gas tank apparently exploded, starting a
fire that consumed the SUV and the train's first car, which was
left blackened and mangled.

Elizabeth Bordiga was commuting home from her New York City
nursing job when she suddenly felt the train jerk a few times.
She and other passengers in the middle part of the train started
calmly walking to the back. But then they started smelling
gasoline, "and somebody said, "There's a fire," she recalled.

But they couldn't open the emergency window or figure out how to
escape until a firefighter in the train got a door open, she
said. Commuters lifted each other down from the train to the
ground about 7 feet below, said Bordiga, who uses a cane.

"When I was on the ground, I looked to the right and saw flames.
I couldn't believe it," she said.

In the first car, a man whose own hands were burned elbowed open
the emergency exit latch, allowing some of the train's roughly
700 passengers to escape, passenger Christopher Gross recalled
on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The train's engineer tried to rescue people until the smoke and
flames got so severe that he had to escape, Astorino said.

Every day, trains travel across more than 212,000 highway-grade
rail crossings in the U.S. There are an average of 230 to 250
deaths a year at such crossings, down over 50 percent from two
decades ago, FRA figures show.

Risky driver behavior or poor judgment accounts for 94 percent
of grade crossing accidents, according to a 2004 government
report.

Metro-North is the nation's second-busiest commuter railroad,
after the Long Island Rail Road, serving about 280,000 riders a
day.

Late last year, the NTSB issued rulings on five Metro-North
accidents in New York and Connecticut in 2013 and 2014,
repeatedly finding fault with the railroad.

Among the accidents was a 2013 derailment in the Bronx that
killed four people, the railroad's first passenger fatalities,
The NTSB said the engineer had fallen asleep at the controls
because of a severe, undiagnosed case of sleep apnea.

___

Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Ula Ilnytzky and Meghan
Barr in New York; Joan Lowy in Washington; and Michael Kunzelman
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/us/article/Commuter-train-slams- into-SUV-on-tracks-killing-6060921.php#/0

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