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As federal investigators arrive, family of man who died when dragged by a Red Line train wants answers
By adamg on Mon, 04/11/2022 - 11:35pm
WCVB talks to the family of Robinson Lalin, a father of two who died early Sunday when his arm got stuck in the door of an older 1500-series train inbound at Broadway station and was then dragged to his death.
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Comments
(T)ragedy
Broadway station is equipped with several surveillance cameras that captured the incident but the video is probably too gruesome and horrible to ever be released. The civil suit will never go to trial because a jury made up of red line riders will award the family millions. Right now the T brain trust is trying to decide where the blame lies. Blame the ancient trains that are not safe or properly maintained or blame the operator who will be terminated and face possible criminal charges. The NTSB has quickly taken over the investigation from the in-house transit police investigators which means the T can't cover this one up.
Blame also belongs with the
Blame also belongs with the Baker admin and everyone who made the decision to have the trains operate with only one person, the driver, and no conductor. They eliminated an effective safety protocol, and that action has led to a predictable result. Time to reverse that decision.
As an aside, it is great to see transportation safety get so much attention. But it would be even better if NTSB and the media would treat car crash related death and injury with the same gravity. Car crashes are extremely common and by and large preventable, if we can avoid the blame game and focus on creating safe systems. Deaths and injuries on the T are Black Swans, notable because they are relatively rare. Why are they so rare? Because we take them seriously and work to prevent them from reoccurring.
Uh
IANAL, but that's not really something that the defendant gets to just decide, y'know?
The expectation is a settlement
... which is entirely reasonable.
The T does not want this video released. The likely defendant for negligent homicide, the operator, doesn't want this video released. If I were the family, I wouldn't want the video released.
So the T will have to pay out a smaller, but still pretty damn substantial, settlement, and the operator will have to plead guilty. Or the video be out there as more snuff porn, and everything (payout, jail sentence, ongoing reputation damage) will be increased. The only winners in that scenario are the lawyers.
And yet
And yet the T doesn't get to decide if there will be a settlement, merely if they will offer one.
Plenty of blame to go around here.
A combination of poorly-maintained cars and a history of signal problems, as well as irresponsible driving on the part of the operator of that particular train, as well as the irresponsible attitudes of the MBTA staff, and the consequences of refusing to fix smaller maintenance problems when they first come up, thus allowing them to get bigger and more complicated all contributed to this guy's horrific and untimely death, and the grief of his family.
That driver should also be criminally tried and charged, imprisoned for awhile, and never be allowed to operate an MBTA train again.
Let's wait for some details before we try this in public
Regardless of the cause, this should not have happened. If the driver was negligent, then that will come out. I'm not ready to throw the driver in jail based on the tiny bit of details that we have to date.
Considering that having past
Considering that having past interactions with police is grounds to exclude jurors from trials of police misconduct I imagine the defense could exclude all Red Line riders or all T riders generally. We've all got our (relative to this, very minor) horror stories.
I think Americans take for
I think Americans take for granted just how safe US rail travel is. When an incident like this happens, we get up in arms about it, the Feds dispatch investigative teams, and the story is news, because news by definition is something that rarely happens.
For perspective, on the metro rail system in Mumbai there are four deaths a day, everyday. And those are pandemic numbers. A man getting ensnared and killed by a Mumbai train wouldn't be called "news". It would be called Tuesday.
an older 1500-series train
Is that the year they were built? Where are all the new trains? Are they going to be in "testing" for a decade? How come the USAG has not brought charges against the CRRC?
Boy, that decision to eliminate the second operator
...is paying big dividends now, huh?
https://www.universalhub.com/2011/mbta-gearing-single-operator-red-line-...
"...arm got stuck..."
"...arm got stuck..."
Does anybody* have any basic information on whether he was in the train doorway trying to get in, in the train trying to get out, on the platform trying to get in the train, or what exactly?
*Anybody as in "any of us out here in comboxes"
Too many people placing blame without having basic information.
What we do know
Multiple levels of safety systems failed Mr. Lalin.
The specifics of those failures will be what is learned through investigation.
His death was quite horrific.
His death was quite horrific. Real Horrorshow! as Alex DeLarge from "A Clockwork Orange" might have said. Arm ripped of and every bone in his body broken. Definitely a closed casket funeral,
Wow
This is oversharing, really. Anyone who wanted the details could have gone and found them.