During the busy rush hour commute on Thursday morning, tragedy struck in Hoboken, New Jersey. A New Jersey Transit train, packed with the brim with commuters approaching the city after a 17-stop route, crashed into the platform at the Hoboken station.
As of right now, officials say that over one hundred people have been injured and one person has died. Many of the injuries are serious.
Witnesses to the accident have said that the train overran its stopping point, hit a bumper, went into the air and pushed into a passenger concourse at about 8:45 a.m. at the Hoboken terminal, which is one of the busiest transit hubs in the New York area as it also is a major PATH train stop and is the gateway from New Jersey to New York City.
This fatal crash comes five years after more than 30 people were injured when a train overran its stop at the same station. Some federal lawmakers said positive train control, which is a system that combines GPS, wireless radio and computers to monitor trains and stop them from colliding, derailing or speeding, might have helped in this situation. New Jersey Transit has not yet installed the positive train control, although it does employ an older safety system. Originally, Congress required the positive safety system to be installed by the end of 2015, but they extended the deadline to the end of 2018.
So many people in and around the New York City area use commuter trains just like this one every single day. The New Jersey Transit is the third largest public transit system in the country, and over 15,000 people board trains in the Hoboken station each day.
Train accidents have become far too common as of late, which is unsettling to travelers and commuters. Eight people died and over 200 people were injured when, in 2015, an Amtrak train carrying 242 people derailed outside Philadelphia on the busiest Amtrak corridor in the country. It was ruled that the derailment was caused by the train’s engineer becoming distracted by other radio transmissions and losing situational awareness, and said that it would have been prevented by positive train control – the system that investigators say could have helped in the Hoboken crash that occurred Thursday.
The attorneys at the Law Office of Richard M. Kenny have over a combined century of experience and achieved over $100 million in verdicts and settlements to prove their success rate. Our attorneys are very familiar with the railways and laws in and around New York City and have been tackling train accident cases since they began their careers. This is their expertise and they are here to help you get the results you deserve. Call our office today to speak to an attorney about your next steps after a train accident.
