Locomotive engineers are victims, too, when rail fatalities occur
(The following article by John Cichowski was posted on the NorthJersey.com website on April 7. Ken Michel is the BLET’s New Jersey State Legislative Board Chairman.)
OAKLAND, N.J. – Ken Michel shuddered when he heard about the grisly deaths of the bridegroom-to-be and his companion. Both men were killed Monday when a Susquehanna & Western locomotive rammed their landscaping truck at an Oakland railroad crossing.
By now, somewhere in Washington, D.C., an entry in a Federal Railroad Administration safety log marks this event in dry numerals:
But Michel knows the math is incomplete.
“The two guys in the truck weren’t the only victims,” he said. “You’ve got to count the engineer and the conductors, too.”
A CSX Corp. train engineer for 32 years, Michel speaks from bitter experience. From January to June 1980, he was at the helm when his train was involved in six vehicular or pedestrian accidents – three within two weeks.
“Almost all were fatal,” he recalled. “It’s like somebody put a gun in your hand and forced you to pull the trigger. You have no control, yet you’re the one who did it.”
The engineer, New Jersey legislative chairman for the 800-member Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, suffers from the same post-traumatic stress disorder endured by war veterans. In one case in Newark, he remembers seeing the face of the victim as the man walked across the tracks.
“Just before I hit him, he turned and looked at me,” he said. “It doesn’t take much to bring these memories back.”
He recalled a colleague who was constantly reminded of his crash every time he passed the accident site because “nobody removed the bumper of the car from the side of the track.”
Michel estimates that engineers and crew members see a crash every 18 to 24 months, usually at crossings. This is the sort of unofficial statistic that i