Subway/Train accidents? (New York, Long Beach, York: safe, beach, relocating to)

[punkrocker27ka]

I am in the Orange County/Los Angeles CA area but will be relocating to New York City soon. Today we had a very bad train collision between our commuter train Metrolink and a freight train. We had a another bad accident a few years ago when a man attempting suicide parked his car on the train tracks but then decided to just run away and leave his car. Many people were killed in that one too. Also I believe we have the deadliest lightrail line in the nation the Blue Line which runs from Long Beach to downtown LA.
My question is how often are there train accidents, crashes, etc in the New York area? It would seem to be that New York has much more experience in trains than we do out west, but how frequent and how bad are any accidents that you have experienced in a place famous for train travel?

[009]

The last major crash to happen was in '95 on the Williamsburg Bridge. The motorman died and more than 4 dozen passengers were injured. After that there have been other "minor" rear ends, low speed derailments and bumper block overshoot in passenger service, but nothing to the extent of the crash on the bridge.

[Moderate Guy]

train accidents are a rarity here. incidents in the train are not, however.

[THE TRAINMAN]

The last major accident in the system occured in 1991 that involved customer fatalaties,a very sad thing .in 1995 we an incident involving a collision on the willliamsburg bridge in a rear tradgedy that caused his death.the nycta system uses a variety of safe guard that will cause a train to stop to avoid a collision;however it is still up to the skills of the motorman to insure taht it does not get to this point.recently there was a minor collision on the #7 train line,that involved two light(no customers) no was hurt ;however it did cause a major disruption in service that nycta was able to get around.nycta is still the largest and best system around but we are not perfect ,yet!

[Fred314X]

The single worst accident in the New York City subway system was the Malbone Street Wreck, which occurred just outside Prospect Park station (today's B and Q lines) in November, 1918. Somewhere between 97 and 102 died--an official figure was never established. Residents of the area decided that they didn't like their street being associated with the disaster, and changed its name to Empire Boulevard.

Incidentally, if you take the southbound Franklin Avenue shuttle, you can see the exact location of the Malbone Street Wreck, at the entrance to the portal just before you come into Prospect Park station. Some of the marks made by the train when it hit the portal are still extant!

[BXGEAR]

I remember the N/W train derailed a couple of months back. Dont know if anyone was injured

[dixiecupdrinking]

I can't tell if you're asking out of curiosity or because you're worried about it. If it's the latter, then rest assured that your odds of being injured in a subway accident are almost nil, and are far lower than the likelihood of getting hurt in a car crash in a city where you have to drive to work.