New York – A train accident occurred on Friday, as the F train made its way toward Manhattan and then Brooklyn. The train derailed in Queens, NY when investigators say that a rail broke. Several subway cars collided into each other and slammed into the walls, injuring at least 19 victims and trapping approximately 1,000 passengers in the tunnels. Reports have indicated that the broken train rail may have just been installed as recently as March. It was apparently put in to replace an older rail that had a crack in it. The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) engineering and safety experts are trying to determine how many other subway rails have been replaced from the same batch as this one. Transportation safety activists have expressed concern regarding the subway system’s safety record keeping and organization, worrying if negligence maintenance may have played a role in this train crash. Some have contended that several dangers and hazardous conditions have been ignored in the past by engineers and the administration.
Experts say that the broken rail that caused the collision needs to be examined by unbiased engineers in order to determine the cause. They say that defective design, inferior manufacturing materials or techniques or even faulty installation of the tracks could have led to the accident. Meanwhile, time is of the essence since there are possibly many more of these train tracks from the same batch that have been installed throughout the MTA system. To prevent further injuries or deaths, advocates have demanded that the administration urgently investigate the matter and stop using the potentially faulty rails pending a full analysis. Read more about the subway crash and current inquiry here.
Illustrative photo by Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York (NYCT_3396Uploaded by tm) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons