that the engineer missed something or operator error. help us understand what these other possibilities are. how can the engineer not be in some way responsible. i believe he is responsible. there s certainly a small possibility of a mechanical problem. when you ve got a train going twice the maximum speed of 50 miles an hour, to me it s a no-brainer. it s intuitively obvious to the casual investigator the train was going way too fast. generally speaking that s going to be an engineer operating failure. so when it comes to his story, mayor, i want to get your take on this, the engineer s attorney, he spoke to abc news and right now says he has no recollection of the event. listen to hear what he said. he has i believe result of the concussion, he has absolutely no recollection
tom, thanks. joining me now, ntsb board member robert. you gave the address today. you talked to the media. let s start with this. are there possible mechanical reasons that a train would be going at a speed into a curve independent of operator error? chris, we certainly want to look at that. we want to look at the operator we want to look at the mechanical condition of the train, we want to look at the signaling system. so we want to take a wholistic approach to understand why this train ended up in the situation that it did. when you look at the crash site, as i did in the helicopter today, the physics of what happened are pretty apparent. you guys don t have a lot of mystery in terms of what happened, right? how did the train get to that speed and why did it get to that speed are the big questions. exactly. let me ask you about a legal question. my understanding is that the nature of the law is that the ntsb can legally compel testimony from people involved
lot on your hands. we know you re going to be giving a briefing, update later this afternoon. first off, most importantly, what s the update on the investigation you can offer us right now? good morning, kate. today is a very busy day for our investigatee. we have a lot of investigators going out in different directions. we re looking at that forward facing image recorder. we re going to do further analysis of the event it s self. we re going to do a brake check of the train. just a lot going on today, kate. brake check, further analysis of those boxes. you also say mayor nutter went too far when he suggested it was operator error, that something reckless happened inside the locomotive that caused this crash. we know that the train was going 106 miles an hour as it headed into that curve. if it was not the fault of the engineer, if he did not miss something, what else could cause a train to go that fast in a place where it s not supposed to
a turn. 79 people were killed. experts insist the technology called ptc could make accidents like this a thing of the past. it is a sophisticated system of sensors on the rails and inside the engine car even using satellites to track the train s movements and prevent many movements by operator error. if an engineer doesn t slow down, the computer activates the brake. ptc prevents collisions too stopping a train from blowing through red signals. in new york investigators say the engineer fell asleep as his train went into a sharp curve at more than 80 miles per hour. ptc is on america s most wanted list. this is exactly the type of accident that ptc is designed to prevent. we have seen this before and we will continue to see it again
in the u.s. would have to get just slightly more modern not like, you know hydrogen powered cars and jet packs and futuristically hypermodern stuff, just some basic systematic safety upgrades that would take advantage of the fact that we are now a society that has things like computing machines and gps. this is not the most high-tech stuff. what they mandated for the u.s. rail system is something called positive train control. a very basic avoidance system that reduces stupid operator error or a train conductor having a heart attack at the engine. it reduces the chance that something unfortunate but human and predictable like that could result in a train derailment or train collision. basically, positive train control is a system that monitors speed limits and track signals, it signals to the train