A train hit the station in Hoboken, N.J. and there are injuries. Natural circumstances/human error/something else?

Health issue or Human error.

had to be a health issue i think

i heard the driver had sleep apnea and fell asleep

We heard about the accident on the news in Britain, but as far as I know it's not been reported here since. Has the cause been established yet?


Was it 2 years ago now that in Germany, two trains collided head-on, on a single-track section, thanks to a human error? The section was guarded, as you'd expect, by a signal at each end so only one train could be let into the section at a time.

The signalman allowed the second train to proceed although the first had already passed the green light at the opposite end: I don't know if he controlled both signals or if each was looked after by its own signalman, but that doesn't really matter. News reports state he spotted his error almost immediately but by then the train he should have stopped safely on its own line still in the double-track section, was on its way along what had been indicated as a "clear road ahead".

So the authorities prosecuted him...

Think about it to spot the double injustice (you don't need to understand railway signalling systems or be a train-driver or lawyer, and I am none of them, but the clues are all in what I have written.)

The Hoboken accident seems to have been forgotten by news reporters, but they will do quite quickly anyway - too many other things going on.

In the German case, the driver assumed he'd a clear "road" because the signals indicated so. The cause was reported as a genuine error by the signal-man, and he realised his mistake almost straight away but by then it was too late.

I do not know what the outcome was, and perhaps the poor man is still awaiting a trial, but I see two injustices in prosecuting someone is his situation, in a case like that.

1) It was a genuine mistake, not a malicious act. If national law authorities, safety agencies etc thought it right to treat mistakes as wilful acts then society would grind to a halt under the weight of cases and the reluctance of anyone to take responsible posts.

2) If it is possible to give the ahead to drivers approaching a single-track railway from opposite ends at the same time by simple mistake, clearly the signalling is not designed to prevent such mistakes, and the prosecutors are blaming the wrong people. 

Problems of such conflicts on single-track lines and at junctions were recognised in Britain (which invented public railways) and very likely America, very early on in railway history in the 19C, and led to "interlocking" of both the points and the signals so it's physically impossible to set the route incorrectly. There is still a flaw in the system though, and that's the driver mis-reading the signal, or reading the wrong one for his line, and passing the red light. There have been one or two accidents and various near-misses in Britain even in recent years due to this, but even in the late 19C the railways introduced Automatic Warning Systems that alerted the driver still at a safe distance, of a Stop signal ahead, though they did not take control and stop the train. 

At least the Driver in steam days had an assistant, the Fireman, who when not attending to the boiler acted as a second pair of eyes looking for the signals ahead - and could act to safeguard the train if the driver became incapacitated. Modern train drivers work alone, so if they make a mistake or fall asleep, although releasing the controls will cut the power and apply the brakes, there is no-one immediately in the cab to help.   

Really, such cases show that however much you throw at a system, railway or not, to make it as safe as possible, it will never remove all risk; inquiries try to determine why the specific accident happened and to help avoid a repeat, but systems devised and operated by humans can never be infallible.

And no automatic system can guard against the unexpectedly wilful, as seems to have caused the loss of the Indonesian airliner in the Indian Ocean a couple of years ago. We will probably never know why that happened: that knowledge died with the pilots.

The Moorgate Station (London Underground) disaster in 1975 also showed sometimes the cause can never be known even where nothing has disappeared and there is no evidence of deliberate act. As at Hoboken, the driver failed to stop at a terminus; but the Underground train did not even appear to slow down, and rammed the blank end of the tunnel just beyond the station, killing 43 , injuring 74 others. Since the driver was among the dead, and no contributory mechanical or electrical faults were found, we will never know why it happened; but London Underground subsequently installed an automatic braking system to guard against repeats.