Former NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt says woman’s death could have been prevented in Clarendon Hills Metra crash

CHICAGO (CBS) — We have been looking for answers since a passenger was ejected from Metra train and killed when the train hit a truck in Clarendon Hills earlier this week.

Now, CBS 2’s Tim McNicholas has uncovered even more troubling information.

Robert Sumwalt is the former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board – which is investigating the accident. Sumwalt came forward Friday to say the death of 71-year-old Christina Lopez in the train accident Wednesday morning could have been prevented.

“Certainly, it’s a tragic situation,” said Sumwalt, now a CBS News transportation safety analyst and executive director of the Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.  “But it’s something that likely could have been prevented, had certain NTSB recommendations had been fulfilled by the Federal Railroad Administration.”

The NTSB made one of those recommendations about eight years ago, when Sumwalt was an NTSB board member. The agency found some passengers on a Metro-North Railroad train that derailed in the Bronx died on Dec. 1, 2013 “as a result… of ejection through windows.”

The NTSB recommended the Federal Railroad Administration, which regulates railroad rules, should “develop a performance standard to ensure that windows are retained…during an accident.”

The NTSB reiterated that request in 2015, when it found that some victims of an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia likely would have lived if the windows stayed intact.

But today, that request is still listed as open – and the FRA says they’re still researching the issue.

“When we see another accident with similar circumstances, and it hasn’t been corrected, that’s devastating,” Sumwalt said.

It’s a problem that dates back 50 years, when multiple people died after being ejected from a derailed Amtrak City of New Orleans train in Southern Illinois.

“In 1972, the NTSB noted that window ejections accounted for a large portion of passenger fatalities,” a 2015 NTSB report reads.

Sumwalt asid in 2016, the NTSB recommended the FRA conduct research on ways to prevent passenger injuries, such as seatbelts, and then develop a better safety plan.

What came of those recommendations?

“The NTSB is basically waiting for those recommendations to be implemented,” Sumwalt said.

As the FRA researches safety measures, the NTSB is investigating exactly how Lopez was ejected from the Metra BNSF Railway train after it a struck a truck Wednesday morning.

CBS 2 has reviewed video that appears to show her body strike a window – either dislodging or breaking it as the impact of the crash propels her out of the train.

It was a tragic moment.

“It’s even more tragic to endure an accident, and then make recommendations, and then those recommendations aren’t enacted upon – and then you have similar tragedies down the road,” Sumwalt said.

The FRA said they are committed to addressing the window recommendation once their research is complete.

Meanwhile, the commute has returned to normal after the Wednesday morning crash. All trains on the BNSF lines are back on the regular schedule, and stopping again at the Clarendon Hill stop.