Trust the San Francisco Municipal railway authorities to get to the cause of the train accident with lightning speed. Nearly three days after a Muni train rear-ended another train stopped at a red light, injuring at least a dozen passengers, there is still no word on why the train accident occurred. The Muni authorities have been safely sticking to their standard “all investigations are underway” and “we are committed to the safety of our passenger” lines. This is all very reassuring, but when one of your trains has managed to slam into another one, causing some very severe injuries to passengers, you should be able to come right out and admit what happened, instead of hiding behind inanities.

The train accident occurred at about 2 pm on Saturday; a three-car T-third train that was going westbound on King’s Street rear-ended a two car-N-Judah train. The impact was strong enough to damage both cars, especially the N-Judah train, which had its rear smashed completely. People in the two trains were thrown to the floor, and many of them were rushed to the hospital. Injuries ranged from moderate to very severe.

So far, no one is quite sure how two trains managed to crash in the middle of the day, in perfect weather. Witnesses who were at the scene of the train accident say that there was no warning that anything was about to happen. A loud crash was the only sign that something had gone wrong.

Both train drivers were injured, and were rushed to a hospital. The driver of the T-Third train that rear ended the other train is reported to have at least four years of experience at the controls.

This much is clear. The maximum speed limit for trains in that area is 3 mph, and so far, there has been no confirmation that the T-Third train was speeding at the time of the train accident. There was one reliable witness to the crash – a street supervisor who was assigned the duty of keeping all trains on his watch moving ahead smoothly and on schedule. Not surprisingly, considering the veil of secrecy that seems to be surrounding this train accident, Muni officials have refused to confirm whether the supervisor tried to warn the train operators in the moments before the crash.

It’s alarming that 3 days after a disastrous train accident, we are still nowhere close to having even an outline of the causes of the accident. In the meantime, the thousands of passengers who depend on these trains for transportation are still going about their jobs, taking Muni trains to and from their homes, offices and the rest of their lives. They deserve to know what the cause of the train accident was. If the operator was speeding, if the supervisor was not observant enough, if there were other factors involved – they deserve to be told, and quickly.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of train accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.