Residents of New York City are acclimated to using trains and subways to get around. It is convenient and eliminates the headache of getting involved in a car accident or incurring an obscene number of parking tickets. It doesn’t always work so well, however, especially when that secure routine is marred by the existence of public transportation accidents.
Surprisingly, minor train accidents occur often in the city; major ones happen more rarely, but still with some regularity. Just recently, a Long Island Rail Road train caused an accident that is best characterized as being serious. Over 100 passengers had to be transported to local hospitals for diagnosis and treatment of injuries.
The train’s route went from Long Island to a hub in Brooklyn, where it would branch out further to serve suburban and New York city stops. However, on Jan. 4 it did not work right; instead, the train did not stop, and it crashed into the bumping block at the Brooklyn station. It jumped the tracks, and its front part crashed into a room in the building at the stop.
The scene at the station was absolute bedlam, per various passengers and witnesses. One of the passengers described that people went “flying” through the air, landing wherever the force took them. Those passengers that were standing in anticipation of getting off at the stop were the most seriously jolted. Those seriously injured are entitled to make a claim for personal injury damages against the train company.
New York City has its share of public transportation accidents. Passengers or bystanders who are injured are often best served by obtaining an immediate consultation with a personal injury attorney who is well-versed in such accidents and the laws and regulations that govern them. At this point, no one knows why there was a malfunction, but signs point to human error as it was the duty of the train operator to bring the train to a stop at each station.
Source: The New York Times, “L.I.R.R. Crash in Brooklyn Injures More Than 100“, Eli Rosenberg and Noah Remnick, Jan. 5, 2017