Engineer of Amtrak train that derailed in 2017 is suing for lost pay
Jun 1, 2021, 10:23 AM | Updated: 10:24 am
Emergency crews work at the scene of a Amtrak train derailment on Dec. 18, 2017, in DuPont, Washington. (Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)
(Photo by Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)
The engineer at the controls of the Amtrak train that derailed in 2017 near DuPont, Washington, killing three people, is suing to get his salary and pension back.
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An October 2021 court date has now been set for 59-year-old engineer Steven Brown to make the case that he’s due lost pay and to regain his engineer’s license. The Tacoma News Tribune says Brown can argue that his mistake — taking a curve too fast — was not the sole reason for the 2017 train derailment.
“The engineer was set up to fail,” said Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.
Sumwalt says the NTSB found failures by four agencies — Sound Transit, Amtrak, the Washington State Department of Transportation, and the Federal Railroad Administration — contributed to the crash. The most notable failure was not installing positive train control, which would have automatically slowed the train. Poor signage, engineer error, and agency safety oversights are all to blame.
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“[The engineer] made a mistake, and you know what, somebody a lot smarter said ‘to err is human,'” Sumwalt said.
“We have to allow for that mistake and put in place redundancies so that when somebody does commit a human error, that mistake is trapped before it becomes consequential,” he added.
KIRO 7 TV reports that starting Tuesday, Amtrak will be training crews on the Point Defiance Bypass where the train derailed in 2017 on its inaugural run. Since the crash, a number of safety improvements have been made along the route.
