The impact instantly killed the train operator. All that’s left of her portion of the train is the husk protruding overtop the second train.

Last night the casualties were at 4 dead and 70 injured. This morning, the death toll is at nine.

Recovery efforts continue this morning.

I am routinely critical of public transportation in the D.C. metropolitan area. It’s supposed to be the greatest in the country, but it is consistently ill-managed, overpriced, and inadequate for the demands of the nation’s capital city.

However, this? This is just horrible. Each of these trains is fitted with “fail-safe” signal systems that are supposed to alert train drivers when they are in dangerous proximity of another train. “Fail-safe” and “fail-proof” are two distinctly different things, apparently. Right now it seems that the fail-safe system failed to alert the driver to the fact that there was a train stopped on the track ahead of her. However, investigators have also said that the driver failed to attempt a manual stop, even though she should have been able to see the stopped train.

At this point, it would be pure speculation as to why the fail-safe alert didn’t sound or why the driver didn’t take emergency manual action. Sadly, several questions regarding the “why” behind the accident may never be completely answered.

Metro maintenance has long earned itself intense ridicule and ire from riders. It seems that they are constantly locked in a no-win battle against failures and glitches and just plain stupid mistakes. The new trains, for instance, arrived a few years ago and were promptly placed in storage until maintenance could sort out the fact that the new train computers were not compatible with the older Metro systems. Then there was the massive failure of relay switches that were supposed to last 70 years, but had only been in use for 25 before they started sending incorrect messages to trains. About 4 years ago, there was also a similar accident to yesterday’s, in which a train collided with another train that was off-loading passengers at the Woodley Park station. No one died in that accident, which was an eerie foreshadowing of what happened yesterday.

All there is to do right now, though, is offer condolences for the families of those who didn’t survive and positive thoughts for those injured.