Page 5 - Event Recorders News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Getting here but our purpose for being here on site is to collect the perishable evidence the information that will go away with the passage of time. so we're going to go and very methodically start collecting information, what was the train speed, what was the speed limit on that curve, that's part of our investigation, is to very carefully document that. [ inaudible question ] >> why don't we do it this way, if you will when you have a question state your name and affiliation and we'll call on you, that will make it a little more organized. the question is what can we get from those event re...

>> reporter: well jake while i talk to you, it is still a search operation here. but meantime there's a full-blown investigation under way. as you mentioned, we now know that train was going in excess of 100 miles per hour as it approached a curve that had a speed limit of 50 miles per hour. the reason why investigators know this they are looking at how the wreckage is laid out at the site, looking at the angles. they're also looking at the sort of damage to the train cars. and we also know they have the train's event recorders. the question now, though is why was this train going so fast? >> ...

He's back. a railroad reconstruction expert. from what you have seen so far how do you suppose this accident happened? >> well we can't really draw any conclusions from what we have at present. i can tell you that the investigation in general is going to look at a number of functional areas. that's going to be human factors, track signal and possible equipment issues. a number of event recorders that are present on a train are going to be downloaded and analyzed. and in particular if we may have had human factors related issue, that data should shed a lot of light on whether or not that can be...

Days. they're investigating speed and human error as possibilities. speed is being looked into. there is a sharp curve in the tracks and just before the area that was 30 miles an hour, the zone where the incident happened, it was 70 miles an hour. there was a sharp dropoff. take a listen. >> we don't know what the train speed was. we will learn that from the vehicle event recorders. incidentally, we have recovered the event recorder off the cab car. we have downloaded the data off the locomotive. we've not had a chance to analyze it or verify it at this point. >> reporter: we're getting a look...

Actually located two event recorders. one was in the locomotive in the back of the train. the other was in the train's front car. the information recorded will give investigators an idea of the trains's speed, its velocity and how the brake system was working. carol? >> alexandria field, reporting live from the bronx. thank you. new details about the fiery car crash that killed "fast and furious" actor paul walker over the weekend. california police say speed was a factor in saturday's accident. walker was in the passenger's seat of this 2005 porsche. this photo taken just 30 minutes before ...