Truck's tire marks in the mud the key to Illinois train disaster

NTSB trying to determine if truck went around barriers as engineer claimed.

The Associated Press

BOURBONNAIS, Ill. -- Investigators are analyzing tire tracks in the mud to determine whether the truck driver at the center of the deadly Amtrak crash had tried to go around the crossing gates and beat the train. The crash between the tractor-trailer and Amtrak's City of New Orleans killed 11 people Monday night in the nation's deadliest train wreck in three years. Tire marks were found on the road, on timbers at the crossing and in the mud along the shoulder of the road, said Bob Lauby, director of the National Transportation Safety Board's office of railroad safety. "The tire marks may belong to the truck, they may not," Lauby said Wednesday. "Put all these marks together and we should be able to recreate exactly where the truck was and how it negotiated that crossing." On Tuesday, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Amtrak's chairman, said the train engineer had accused the truck driver of trying to go around the lowered crossing gates instead of waiting for the train to pass. But John Goglia of the NTSB said the engineer had been too shaken to provide a good account of what happened. "We will wait to get that from the engineer ourselves," he said. "When we get it in direct testimony to ourselves, then we will respond to it." The truck driver, John Stokes, who was driving on a probationary license after three speeding violations in Indiana, told investigators he had already proceeded into the crossing when the gates came down. His rig was loaded with steel rods produced at a mill nearby. Investigators planned to question Stokes again and use a truck and a locomotive to re-create the scene and determine whether the driver could have seen the train approaching at 79 mph. Authorities said there was no indication that crossing gates had failed to work. The red signal light flashes for five seconds before the gates descend, each blocking one lane of the two-lane access road. The train comes through 26 seconds later. Goglia said Stokes, who suffered only minor injuries in the crash, underwent a breath test for alcohol. "All I know is that it didn't show he went over the limit," he said. The onrushing twin locomotives swept the truck aside and smashed into two railroad cars on a siding. When the locomotives stopped, many of the 14 cars hurtling along behind plowed into the engines, jackknifed and piled up in a heap of twisted metal. All of the victims were killed in a double-deck sleeper car that was ripped open and burned. The initial count of those killed was 13. But Goglia revised that to 11 on Wednesday. NTSB spokesman Jamie Finch said two people walked away from the wreck after the accident and had been assumed dead. Finch also said all 216 people aboard the train had been accounted for. Family members of those who died boarded two buses and were driven from their motel to the crash site, where they hugged, placed flowers on the ground and laid a wreath on a fence.

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