Yep. If I'm in a room of a house, or whatever, and something strikes a window, I'm going to recoil away from that window. It's a natural reflex, and is done automatically.
Could that engineer have bumped up against the throttle while doing that? Someone who really knows the layout of a train's cab will have to weigh in on this.
The engineer would have to be really shocked by this event, as it takes at least one minute to accelerate from 50 mph to 100+ mph. As the windshield was NOT penetrated even after the crash, I don't see why would the engineer be shivering in terror for so long - even if he pushed the controls to the maximum. He'd have to be massively injured to forget that this track has a speed limit and a curve is coming up. He was operating trains on this route for five years, as I heard. Plenty of time to learn every turn, considering that there isn't much else to do when on duty.
If I were to guess, the engineer was high on drugs, or perhaps asleep. The crash occurred at 9:21pm; so a natural sleep at that time is not very likely. There are a beeper and a light to test the engineer's response, but some learn to clear it without a conscious effort - just like people hit "snooze" on their alarm clocks without fully waking up. I presume that the engineer's blood was sampled after the crash and is being tested.
I’ve seen a few vehicles impacted by objects that hit the windscreen. Know what happens, they stopped.
So it is possible that a strike to the windshield could cause the engineer rotate away towards the rear pulling the throttle to the rear, thus the increase in speed.