Chicago rail crash driver ‘dozed off’

Thursday, 28 Mar, 2014 0

National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the driver of a Chicago commuter train that crashed at O’Hare International Airport admitted to ‘dozing off’ moments before the accident.

It also revealed that this was the driver’s second such incident in as many months.

The NTSB said the female train operator nodded off previously on February 1 and overshot a station.

Chief investigator Ted Turpin said the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) was aware of the first incident and the driver was reprimanded by a supervisor.

He also added that she had only been operating trains for two months.

The CTA confirmed the operator, who has not been named, is on ‘injured duty status’ and that disciplinary measures relating to the latest incident could result in dismissal as a second safety violation.

NTSB are looking into the operator’s erratic schedule to see if fatigue was a contributory cause of the crash.

It said the employee worked as a ‘fill-in’ covering a variety of different shifts where needed.

The crash caused an estimated $6 million in damage and injured 30 passengers, none thought to be seriously.

The crash site is still closed and Blue Line services have been replaced by a bus shuttle from Rosemont to O’Hare.

By Ray Montgomery, Editor TravelMole US

Bev

Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.

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