crazy about automobiles

Trying to shed a record of deadly accidents, Southern California's Metrolink system will take a leap forward on safety this week when it unveils the nation's first commuter train cars designed to better protect riders and crews with crash-absorbing, collapsible impact zones.
Akin to the crushable bumpers added to automobiles in the 1970s, the 117 high-tech cars, costing a total of $230 million, are the product of years of federal research and a fast-tracked development push by the region's rail service after a horrific accident five years ago in Glendale.



After another deadly collision in 2008 exposed lax safety practices, the agency hopes its voluntary deployment of the innovative train cars in the fall — after a summer of testing and federal certification —will mark a milestone in its effort to rebuild public trust and reassure its customers.
Customers like Miguel Alvarado of Norwalk.
"Two or three [big] accidents makes you ask: ‘Are you sure you're safe?' " said Alvarado, a retired county social worker waiting for a train at the Santa Fe Springs station last week.
Metrolink officials stress that their goal is to prevent crashes through an array of innovative safety advancements, including using video cameras to watch locomotive engineers and setting the country's most aggressive deadline for launching a high-tech, computerized collision avoidance system.
But safety experts and the Federal Railroad Administration, which helped underwrite studies and crash testing underpinning the new design, are also praising Metrolink for leading the industry toward a passenger car safety standard long sought by the National Transportation Safety Board.
"It's very encouraging," said Kitty Higgins, a former NTSB board member who oversaw the on-site investigation of the 2008 Metrolink disaster in Chatsworth, one of the worst rail accidents in modern state history. "We've known for a long time certain basic things need to be done to make these cars more substantial."
Among the key defenses incorporated into the shiny, stainless-steel double-decker cars will be collapsible nose cones in front of engineers and riders on so-called cab cars, the passenger vehicles that lead the trains half the time as they run in reverse, heading inbound toward the Los Angeles Union Station hub. Current cab cars have little in front of the driver's control booth and the passenger compartment except a flat, thin car wall.