Feds chide LIRR on deadly safety lapse

Long Island Rail Road management doesn’t encourage its workers to follow safety rules, and that contributed to the death of a train foreman last summer, federal investigators said on Thursday.

The LIRR foreman and a group of workers were walking along tracks in Queens Village on June 10 as a train approached from behind.

A watchman warned them, but because the agency didn’t have a designated safety spot, the workers were unsure where to go, the National Transportation Safety Board found.

Most of the workers stayed put, but the foreman jumped onto another track, into the path of the train, which was traveling at 78 mph. The foreman, whose name was not released by the MTA or the NTSB, died at the scene.

The employees should have cleared the tracks and had a “predetermined place of safety,” but they didn’t, the NTSB found.

The investigators issued an “urgent” safety recom- mendation directing the MTA, which runs the LIRR, to get its act together.

“The NTSB is concerned LIRR management is overlooking and, therefore, normalizing noncompliance with safety rules and regulations for proper clearing of tracks while using ‘train approach warning’ for worker protection,” investigators said in the report.

LIRR officials embraced the suggested changes.

“The safety of our employees and customers is the absolute top priority for everyone at the MTA,” said agency spokesman Aaron Donovan.

The NTSB also determined that the deadly head-on crash that killed two Amtrak workers in South Carolina on Feb. 4 was most likely due to human error. A CSX train switch was left in the wrong position, and Amtrak personnel, who were following CSX’s instructions because of downed signal controls, smashed into a freight train.