New York train crash investigation turns to driver

An engineer whose speeding commuter train ran off the rails along a curve, killing four people, experienced a hypnosis-like "daze" and nodded at the controls before suddenly realizing something was wrong and hitting the brakes, a lawyer said Tuesday.

Attorney Jeffrey Chartier accompanied engineer William Rockefeller to his interview with National Transportation Safety Board investigators Tuesday and described the account Rockefeller gave. Chartier said the engineer experienced a sensation almost like road fatigue or the phenomenon sometimes called highway hypnosis. He couldn't say how long it lasted.

What Rockefeller remembers is "operating the train, coming to a section where the track was still clear — then, all of a sudden, feeling something was wrong and hitting the brakes," Chartier said. "... He felt something was not right, and he hit the brakes."

He called Rockefeller "a guy with a stellar record who, I believe, did nothing wrong."

"You've got a good guy and an accident," he said. "... A terrible accident is what it is."

Rockefeller "basically nodded," said Anthony Bottalico, leader of the rail employees' union, relating what he said the engineer told him.

"He had the equivalent of what we all have when we drive a car," Bottalico said. "That is, you sometimes have a momentary nod or whatever that might be."

Rockefeller, 46, has worked on the railroad for 15 years and has been an engineer for 10 years.

While investigators have yet to finish talking with him, questions are swirling around him because the Metro-North Railroad train went into the curve at 82 mph, nearly three times the speed limit. In addition to the four people who died, more than 60 were injured. 

At a news conference Tuesday, federal investigators said they have found no evidence so far of any problems with the brakes or signals before the Sunday-morning wreck in the Bronx.

National Transportation Safety Board member Earl Weener said Rockefeller was still being interviewed. Weener would not comment on the engineer's level of alertness as the train hurtled toward the bend.  

Alcohol tests on the train's crew members were negative, and investigators were still awaiting the results of drug tests, the NTSB official said.

On the day of the crash, Rockefeller was on the second day of a five-day workweek, reporting for duty at 5:04 a.m. after a typical nine-hour shift the day before, according to Weener.  

"There's every indication that he would have had time to get full restorative sleep," Weener said.

The New York Police Department is conducting its own investigation, with help from the Bronx district attorney's office, in the event the derailment becomes a criminal case.  

Rockefeller, meanwhile, stayed out of sight. His lawyer did not return calls, but his union and former co-workers spoke up in his defense.

"This is a man who is totally distraught by the loss of life, and he's having a tough time dealing with that," said Bottalico, his union leader.

He added: "Once the NTSB is done with their investigation and Billy is finished with his interview, it will be quite evident that there was no criminal intent with the operation of his train."  

With the NTSB yet to establish the cause of the crash, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that the engineer could be faulted for the train's speed alone.

"Certainly, we want to make sure that that operator is disciplined in an appropriate way. There's such a gross deviation from the norm," he said.

The NTSB and safety advocates say there’s a technological fix to the risk of human error.

Safety officials have championed what is known as “positive train control” technology for decades, but the railroad industry has sought to postpone having to install it because of the high cost and technological issues.

Investigators haven't yet determined whether the weekend wreck was the result of human error or mechanical trouble. But some safety experts said the tragedy might not have happened if Metro-North had the technology, and a senator said the derailment underscored the need for it.

Positive train control, or PTC, is designed to forestall the human errors that cause about 40 percent of train accidents. It uses GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor trains and stop them from colliding, derailing or going the wrong way.

The transportation safety board has urged railroads to install PTC in some form since 1970, and, after a 2005 head-on collision killed 25 people near Los Angeles, Congress in 2008 ordered rail lines to adopt the technology by December 2015.

Metro-North has taken steps toward acquiring it but, like many rail lines, has advocated for a few additional years to implement a costly system that railroads say presents technological and other hurdles.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority, which oversees Metro-North, said Tuesday: “Implementing PTC by the 2015 deadline will be very difficult for the MTA as well as for other commuter railroads.” 

“Much of the technology is still under development,” it continued, “and is untested and unproven for commuter railroads the size and complexity of Metro-North and LIRR (the Long Island Rail Road), and all of the radio spectrum necessary to operate PTC has not been made available.”

Grady Cothen, a former safety official at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said a PTC system would have prevented Sunday's crash if the brakes were working normally. And Steve Ditmeyer, a former FRA official who teaches at Michigan State University, said the technology would have monitored the brakes and would not have allowed the train to exceed the speed limit.

"A properly installed PTC system would have prevented this train from crashing," he said. "If the engineer would not have taken control of slowing the train down, the PTC system would have."

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority began planning for a PTC system as soon as the law was put into effect, said spokeswoman Marjorie Anders. After some early-stage work such as buying radio frequencies, the MTA awarded $428 million in contracts in September to develop the system for Metro-North and its sister Long Island Rail Road.

But the MTA has advocated for an extension to 2018, saying it's difficult to install such a system across more than 1,000 rail cars and 1,200 miles of track.

"It's not a simple, off-the-shelf solution," Anders said Monday.

On Sunday the train was about half full, with about 150 people aboard, when it ran off the rails while rounding a bend where the Harlem and Hudson rivers meet. The lead car landed inches from the water.

The derailment came amid a troubled year for Metro-North, and marked the first time in the railroad's 31-year history that a passenger was killed in an accident.  

In May, a train derailed in Bridgeport, Conn., and was struck by a train coming in the opposite direction, injuring 73 passengers, two engineers and a conductor. In July, a freight train full of garbage derailed near the site of Sunday's wreck.

Friends and colleagues of the operator had good things to say about the Metro-North veteran.

Married with no children, Rockefeller worked his way up from custodian to engineer during his years at the commuter rail line, according to NTSB member Weener.

"He was a stellar employee. Unbelievable," said his former supervisor, Michael McLendon, who retired from the railroad about a year ago.

McLendon said he was stunned when he heard about the crash, shortly after opening his mail to find a Christmas card from Rockefeller and his wife.

"I said, 'Well, I can't imagine Billy making a mistake,"' McLendon said. "Not intentionally, by any stretch of the imagination."

Rockefeller's work routine had recently changed. He had begun running that route on Nov. 17, two weeks before the wreck, said MTA spokeswoman Anders.

Bottalico said Rockefeller had changed work schedules — switching from afternoons to the day shift, which typically begins at 5 a.m. — but was familiar with the route and qualified to run it.

In case of an engineer becoming incapacitated, the train's front car was equipped with a "dead man's pedal" that must be depressed or else the train will automatically slow down, Anders said.

Bruno Lizzul, an MTA machinist who met Rockefeller when they both worked at Grand Central Terminal around 2000, described the engineer as honest, hardworking and helpful — so much so that he took it upon himself to show up and help Lizzul renovate his home ahead of a baby's arrival.

"He went the extra yard. He just decided to extend himself to me," Lizzul said.  

Lizzul said Rockefeller was very serious about his work: "He would not do anything to upset anybody or in any way cause harm."

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press