Personal Injury Law

The emergency brake activator is known as the "mushroom," and sources say that it was depressed at the time of the collision.  When before the crash the brakes were actually engaged has not yet been determined.  What seems apparent, though, is that the train was in "automatic mode" and should have automatically stopped without operator intervention.

The report states that "experts say these facts point to several possible scenarios: The operator activated the brakes too late; the computers that are supposed to stop a train from getting too close to another train faltered; the train's brakes failed; or some combination of those. Some passengers on the striking train have said that they never felt the train slow down."

Although WMATA offcials are suggesting that there is no evidence of driver error or system signal errors, it is clear that this terrible event was avoidable and would not have happened but for carelessness.

And although WMATA officials maintain that the train cars are safe, "federal investogators consider the cars to be unsafe because of a tendency during a crash to collapse into one another like a telescope, reducing the 'survivability' space, or the area in a car in which passengers can escape harm," comments the Post report.