At least twenty-six people were injured when a northbound No. 1 train collided with an out-of-service train near West 96th Street on January 4, 2024, at about 3:00 p.m., causing the passenger train to derail. The northbound subway train was carrying 300 people.
“All of a sudden, we just felt, like, a loud boom. Everybody on the train kind of, like, swayed back and forth crazily, and there was a loud explosion. And all of the sudden, the train stopped, kind of, smoke was coming into the car. It was insane,” a passenger said.
Among the injured passengers is Jose Luis Rosario. Attorneys Ronemus & Vilensky are representing passenger Rosario in a lawsuit against the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the New York City Transit Authority. Rosario suffered serious personal injuries, including fractured ribs and nerve damage, and mental and physical pain and suffering. He has incurred medical expenses, loss of earnings, and loss of services. The lawsuit against the MTA states the train was operating at an excessive speed, did not have adequate and full braking capacity, and failed to have a dead man’s switch. The lawsuit also states the MTA was negligent in not having signs, lights, or other warnings that a train was approaching at a fast speed, along with other safety measures to prevent collisions and protect its passengers.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), workers on the out-of-service train had been making repairs after someone pulled a number of emergency stop cords and disabled the train. After resetting most of the brakes and disabling others, the workers tried to get the train to the 240th Street railyard when the collision occurred. The NTSB is investigating how the MTA was moving the disabled train, half of which had no brakes.
In addition, the NTSB is questioning why there were no cameras inside or outside of the disabled train, along with no data recorder on board.
A Second Derailment Occurs in Brooklyn
A second derailed incident occurred in less than a week after the northbound train. The subway train derailment occurred on January 10 when the Manhattan-bound F went off the elevated tracks between the West Eighth Street and Neptune Avenue stations in Coney Island shortly before 12:30 p.m. There were 34 passengers and three crew members on the train. The cause of the train derailment is under investigation.
