Join the discussion on the following article:
Truck in ‘Chief’ derailment a driverless runaway
I still think they need to charge the truck owner.
It will be interesting to know the whole story when the NTSB report comes out. What excuse will the individual or individuals who removed the truck from the tracks have for not reporting the damaged rail. I hope Amtrak at least is repaid for damages.
An increadable act of stupidly which will be very costly to the truck owners. A nod to the crew for noticing the rail deformities and going into emergency braking, that saved lives
Charges still should be brought against the truck owner if not the driver who forgot to set the brakes and let’s not forget the person who removed the truck from the tracks and did not report the misalignment. Even at night 12 - 14 inches should have been noticeable.
We’re awfully anxious to bring criminal charges. The owner will have financial responsibility that will probably bankrupt him. I do think that if someone removed the truck from the tracks, they bear responsibility.
It will be very difficult to charge the owner in a case like this. Unless you can show he was actually there directing the trucks removal from the tracks and he knew of the damage to the tracks and failed to call emergency services(911) or the railroad(BNSF) in a timely manner. As for the driver who last operated the truck that individual would not have even needed a license as long as the vehicle was being operated off a publicly owned roadway or area and on private property like the feedlot.
It is likely the individual who last operated the truck may only face being dismissed from his job. I do not know Kansas state law on workplaces, but given that Kansas is a state that does jot want a lot of government regulation, it is possible that no laws or regulations were violated.
Am I missing a detail here? I understand the truck ‘ran away’ and hit the track. But, who at the mill noticed the truck was missing, found it down at the track, and drove it back up the hill before the derailment happened? It was obviously gone by the time the Chief came through.
Hey Trains – There seems to be a hole in your reporting here that has most of us baffled. Could you please update this article to reflect what happened once the truck hit the track? If the truck was not at the scene of the unseated track, that means someone moved it. Who moved it? What has this person said about their handling of the situation? Are they denying that they noticed anything amiss? Do they feel culpable if they failed to inspect the scene before driving a runaway truck away?
Every time one of these things happens, people get on this comment section before any information has been released and say something like this: “Well i’m an expert and it could have only been one of two things and whoever did it needs to go to jail for life!”
I don’t know what happened after the truck ran away, and who retrieved it, and if they saw the track. I do, however, know that the County Attorney thinks it was an accident and that nobody should be charged. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that he knows better than any of us.