The last I read, both trains were going 40 mph, and the text was supposedly sent 1 minute before the crash. NOT sure if that was responsible, even if it looks bad at first. It would help to know what he was doing in the minute up to and including the exact time of crash.
FORGET what I said- if he missed the signal, and because a train takes so long to stop, and other train would have had little to no warning about issue, it appears circumstances show he’s culpable. Of course, especially in an area with a light, he shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing.
Two minutes prior to the collision the train was stopped in Chatsworth picking up passengers. If the conductor waited until the train was fully stopped and only then sent a short quick message prior to leaving the station, it would be hard to prove that sending that message caused him to be inattentive. In the same vein, if he sent it at impact it wouldn’t have made a difference since he wouldn’t have seen the freight train until seconds before impact anyway as they hit on a blind curve and at that point there was nothing he could have done.
“It would help to know what he was doing in the minute up to and including the exact time of crash.”
Yeah. If he’d just of hit the brakes, he could have stopped and pulled off the road, preventing the crash. (/sarc)