Emergency personnel examine the scene after an Amtrak passenger train struck a backhoe, killing two people, in Chester, Pennsylvania, April 3, 2016. (Reuters Photo)
The engineer driving a speeding Amtrak passenger train that crashed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight passengers, was distracted by radio traffic before the derailment, US safety officials said on Tuesday after a year-long investigation.
The engineer of Amtrak Train 188, Brandon Bostian, sped into a curve at over twice the recommended speed minutes after listening to emergency radio calls about a nearby commuter train hit by a thrown rock, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in its findings from the investigation.
The incident could have been prevented if the track was fitted with positive train control, a safety system, the agency's report concluded.
The safety board's Chairman Christopher Hart said Bostian lost track of where the train was before the May 12, 2015, crash in which 186 people were also injured.
"We will delve into the most complicated and unpredictable part of the transportation system - the human being," he told NTSB board members at a hearing in which he presented safety recommendations such as greater use of the positive train control system and better train windows.
The locomotive and seven cars of the New York-bound train derailed at Frankford Junction Curve about 11 minutes after leaving Philadelphia's 30th Street Station. Some passengers were thrown from the train when windows came loose, investigators found.
As the train headed north, Bostian monitored emergency calls between the commuter train and rail dispatcher over six minutes. He sped up to full throttle for about 40 seconds, reaching 106 miles per hour (170 km per hour) on a stretch where the speed limit was 50 mph (80 kph).
Investigators said Bostian may have thought he was already on a higher-speed section following Frankford Junction. The crash occurred at night, and he lacked visual clues about where the train was.
Bostian suffered a concussion, and Stephen Jenner, an NTSB investigator, said Bostian had no recollection of what happened before the accident.
Federally owned Amtrak said in a statement it would review the findings and recommendations. Amtrak has put positive train control on most of the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston and installed inward-facing video cameras on Corridor locomotives, based on NTSB recommendations since the crash.
"The goal is for us to fully understand what happened and how we can prevent a similar tragedy from occurring in the future," Amtrak said.
Hart said 37 people had died in Amtrak accidents since 2008 that positive train control could have prevented. Congress gave railroads until the end of 2015 to implement positive train control, then extended the deadline to 2018.
© Thomson Reuters 2016