Personal Injury Law

Another Amtrak train crashes in Illinois

By Ryan Bradley, Esq.

An Amtrak train crashed into a garbage truck on Thursday becoming the second accident in just over a month involving an Amtrak train hitting another vehicle.

Thankfully, no one was seriously injured in Thursday?s accident.

According to local media reports, the train had left St. Louis and was heading north toward Chicago. The train hit the garbage truck at a railroad crossing near Carlinville, Illinois. The crossing was equipped with warning lights and bells, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

While no one was seriously injured, several passengers and an Amtrak employee were taken to local hospitals for treatment and then released. The garbage truck driver, working for Waste Management Inc., was also taken to an Illinois hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

An investigation into the accident is ongoing. Authorities do not know why the garbage truck was in the path of the train and witnesses claim that the warning lights were working, according to the Post Dispatch report.

This accident is very similar to the one we reported on last month in which ten people were injured in an Amtrak train crash. None of the injuries in that accident were serious either, but if accidents like these continue to occur, it?s only a matter of time before someone is seriously hurt or killed. Sometimes personal injury lawyers with train accident experience are called in to investigate and find that the intersection warning lights are not functioning or the intersection is not safe in some other way. These kinds of errors, if they exist, need to be pointed out and corrected.

For your own safety, don?t ever try to beat a train at a crossing. If you are involved in an accident either in a car or while riding on the train itself, you should take notes on the incident that may be able to help any authorities called in to investigate. You should also contact a personal injury lawyer as soon as possible.

Full post as published by Missouri Accident Lawyer Blog on January 15, 2009 (boomark / email).