Federals examining the fatal disaster by Magdalena Rosova

According to federal investigators audio recordings from a commuter train which collided on Friday and killed 25 people are missing required safety checks between engineer and the conductor.

The recordings showed even though the engineer and conductor called out and confirmed light signals along the track, they did not do so with the two lights the train passed before the wreck.

The commuter train was heading from downtown Los Angeles to Ventura County and failed to stop at the final red signal what forced the train onto a track where freight train was traveling in the opposite direction.

Experts are also planning to investigate the cell phone records of engineer, who died in the crash, and two teenagers, who said they had received a text message from the engineer a moment before the accident.

The Friday crash was the worst rail disaster in 15 years in USA. 25 people were killed and 135 were injured, many of them critically.

Kitty Higgins from National Transport Safety Board said conductor and engineer had not called out signals to each other as they had been required. On the other hand she also admitted the possibility that the train may have entered a dead zone where the recording was interrupted. Experts will examine the truth soon.

Anyway, she repeated that obeying signals on the track was an engineer’s duty.

Higgins also said the disaster could have been prevented with a technology called Positive Train Control which stops a train when it disobeys a signal.


related story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26680908/

by Magdalena Rosova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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edited by Beata Biskova