ANOTHER COLLISION between a METRO bus and the Danger Train has taken place.
KPRC-2 reporter Mary Benton posted this photo of the accident and has twitter updates.
Houston needs more at-grade rail down busy streets!
UPDATE: Here’s more on the KPRC-2 website.
UPDATE 2: Here is more coverage from KTRK-13, KHOU-11, and KRIV-26.
UPDATE 3: KHOU’s report has been updated to include a passenger who asserts that the bus had the green light, and the Danger Train rammed it. Raequel “9 Volt” Roberts promises another investigation. Perhaps someone should obtain an injunction that keeps METRO from destroying/altering the evidence!
KHOU’s report also includes this great quote:
Janet Gates was a passenger on the light rail train.
“You just got to pray every day, because you never know what will happen from one moment to the next,” Gates said.
Not when it comes to the Danger Train!
UPDATE 4: Here is the lede for the pro-METRO Chronicle‘s story:
Nineteen people were injured, none seriously, when a Metro bus and a light rail train collided Monday afternoon in front of Metro’s downtown headquarters, the second such crash at that intersection in five weeks.
So, all nineteen people were transported to the hospital by ambulance, but the pro-METRO newspaper editorializes that their injuries were not serious in their news story?!
Perhaps the injuries were not life-threatening, but it strikes us that injuries that result in ambulance transport to hospitals should not be deemed not serious. The 19 people whose commute was interrupted by a bus/rail crash and ensuing ambulance ride to the hospital probably thought it was serious!
But why editorialize at all? Report the facts and let readers decide what to think. This is just another data point for why we refer to the Chron as America’s worst big-city daily.
UPDATE (03/16/2010): METRO has released a video that would seem to show the bus driver ran a red light.
