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On the evening of February 3, 2015, a commuter train on Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line struck a passenger car at a grade crossing near Valhalla, New York, United States, between the Valhalla and Mount Pleasant stations, killing six people and injuring fifteen others, including seven in "very serious condition." The crash was the deadliest in Metro-North's history, as well as the deadliest such crash in the United States since the June 2009 Washington Metro train collision had killed eight passengers and injured eighty. The crash occurred after an earlier accident on the Taconic State Parkway, which parallels that section of track, had led to the road's closure in one direction. Drivers from the Taconic State Parkway sought alternate routes, one of which went through the grade crossing. The driver of an SUV was caught inside the crossing gate when it descended, wedging itself into the rear of her vehicle, apparently attempted to rectify the situation by crossing the tracks instead of backing up. She, along with five passengers on the train, died when her vehicle was struck by it. The impact tore loose more than of third rail; after piercing her car, it went into the front of the train, broken into sections. Since grade-crossing accidents typically do not lead to fatalities on board the train, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were particularly interested in determining why the fatalities occurred. They believed that fuel from the SUV may have combined with sparks from the dislodged third rail to cause a fire on board the train. They were interested in finding out how the SUV driver got into the position she did in the first place; the detour caused by the earlier road accident may also have played a role. ==Background== At about 5:30 p.m., shortly before sunset on February 3, 2015, a vehicle traveling south along the Taconic State Parkway north of the hamlet of Valhalla in the town of Mount Pleasant, in central Westchester County north of New York City, struck another vehicle making a turn onto Lakeview Avenue from the northbound parkway. Responding emergency services closed both lanes of the southbound Taconic and one northbound lane. Drivers heading both directions left the parkway, seeking alternate routes back to it on local surface roads. At 5:44 p.m., Train 659 of Metro-North Railroad's Harlem Line, which provides commuter rail service over an route from New York City to Wassaic in northeastern Dutchess County, departed Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, south of Valhalla. It was an express train of eight carriages, formed by four Bombardier M7A electric multiple units, bound for Southeast in Putnam County, with Chappaqua its first scheduled stop. At the controls was Stephen Smalls, a 32-year-old resident of Orange County and three-year Metro-North employee. He had been an engineer for nine months. The part of the parkway in Valhalla remained closed. One detour available to northbound traffic involved using Lakeview Avenue and turning at the large Kensico Cemetery, a short distance to the west. Lakeview Avenue crossed the two tracks using a grade crossing.〔 The next such crossing was Commerce Street, a lightly traveled local road to the north that intersects the tracks diagonally. It continues northwest through the cemetery for a quarter-mile (), then turns north again down a slight rise back over another grade crossing to a signalized intersection with the parkway.〔 After a crash at the Commerce Street crossing in 1984 that had killed the driver of the van involved, gates had been installed. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Valhalla train crash」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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