Economy

Regulation

What’s Missing From Railroad Safety Data? Dead Workers and Severed Limbs.

by Topher Sanders, Dan Schwartz, Danelle Morton and Gabriel Sandoval
March 13, 5 a.m. EDT

Thanks to government loopholes, rail companies haven’t been scrutinized by the Federal Railroad Administration for scores of alleged worker injuries and at least two deaths.


Train Country: Investigating Railroad Safety in America

As powerful railroad companies race to maximize profits through efficiency, safety is left behind.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

On a hot July afternoon in 2018, Gregory West found himself trudging through the mountains of northern Tennessee on what would be the last walk of his life.

The engineer and his conductor had been stuck behind a stalled train that had not budged by the end of their shift, and rail company officials told them to walk out to a road where a vehicle could meet them. It would be an hour’s journey up and down steep hills in 88-degree heat. And West, 57, had to lug two large bags of his belongings the entire way. Just as he reached the rendezvous point, he collapsed. The Campbell County medical examiner said West had pneumonia and hypertension, which decreased his oxygen supply before he died. His sister sued the railroad company, CSX, which settled with her for an undisclosed amount.

But none of that is reflected in CSX’s worker injury statistics. ProPublica only found out about it while reviewing lawsuits levied against the nation’s largest freight carriers in the past 15 years. West’s was one of at least 130 worker deaths and other injuries that were alleged to have happened on the job but that railroad companies never reported to regulators.

Among the others, according to the lawsuits, were a CSX conductor who suffered a fatal heart attack after doing physical labor on a subfreezing overnight shift and a contractor who lost three fingers rigging equipment in a Norfolk Southern rail yard.

{snip}