Lawyer: Engineer has 'absolutely no recollection' of Amtrak crash

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

What was Amtrak engineer Brandon Bostian doing and thinking when his speeding train careened off the rails in Philadelphia, killing seven people and sending over 200 more to the hospital?

He can't say.

That's what Bostian's lawyer told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Thursday morning, saying his client "has absolutely no recollection whatsoever of the events" after losing consciousness in the crash Tuesday night.

"He remembers coming into the curve (and) attempting to reduce speed," the attorney, Robert Goggin, said. "... The last thing he recalls is coming to, looking for his bag, getting his cell phone, turning it on and calling 911."

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/14/us/philadelphia-amtrak-train-derailment/index.html

[Brickbat]

1. Not surprising. Trauma is a terrible thing, and the brain works in mysterious ways.

[me b zola]

18. Agreed. It is upsetting to see so many people with torches and pitchforks aimed @ the engineers head

without knowing just what happened.

People who have not experienced extreme trauma find it easy to judge the actions of a person who has just survived horrible trauma. Too many people believe that "to walk a mile in someone else's shoes" means to judge a person by stating how they would have done X, Y, or Z in the other person's situation.

[former9thward]

23. We do know what happened.

He was going 106 mph on the straightaway into the curve. Maximum speed 70 mph. We know he went into the curve at 102 mph. Maximum speed 50 mph. The well known 'I don't recall defense'. He may try that but the black box does not lie.

[me b zola]

38. We know that the train was traveling that fast, yes.

We do not know why the train was traveling that fast.
Allow the facts to come in before you pick up your pitchfork.

[Politicalboi]

2. Sounds like bullshit to me

"The last thing he recalls is coming to, looking for his bag, getting his cell phone, turning it on and calling 911."

Amazing he remembers that. If he was conscience enough to look for his bag with cell phone, that must have happened after the crash to call 911. I'm guessing he was on his cell the whole time instead of watching where the train was going. How many years did this guy work for Amtrak. If it was a long time, he should have been familiar with his surroundings and upcoming curves.

[chillfactor]

5. not bullshit at all....

I was in a horrific car accident and I do not remember one thing about the accident...the doctors told me that is very common....I remember what happened after the accident but not during.....do not be so judgmental...

[Backwoodsrider]

8. yep and the investigators know

I am no investigator but I trust my mind when it comes to reading people and if he is simply lying then he is hiding the fact he killed 8 people and harmed 200 and that is not so easy for the body to hide, especially if the folks asking the questions know what to cue in on. I have faith the truth will come out sooner or later.

[cosmicone]

16. Google "peri-traumatic amnesia"

Last edited Thu May 14, 2015, 06:04 PM - Edit history (1)

It is almost a universal phenomenon after even minor head trauma like a concussion. Ask any quarterback who sees stars after a hit if he remembers the play they were executing.

By the way, his guilt or innocence will not be determined by whether he remembers anything or not. There will be ample objective evidence so he gets no advantage by faking memory loss.

[AngryAmish]

29. Wrong on the head injury thing.

Retrograde amnesia is one of the sign of a moderate traumatic brain injury. A boxing knockout is considered a mild traumatic brain injury.

I have had many clients with brain bruising, coup-contrecoup injuries and lifelong intellectual who remember every moment of their injury.

It is more the region of the brain injured than simple head trauma.

Another thing to consider is the ephemeral nature of memory. Your memory is not a tape recorder. With long term memory every time you remember an event you rewrite it to memory. More RAM than ROM. If you have a reason to forget something, you will forget it.

[cosmicone]

30. What do I know really over DU "experts"?

I'm just a neurologist trained at Harvard and Stanford who ran a head injury clinic.

[AngryAmish]

33. nope. Just a trial lawyer.

Or I could be a basement dweller making ice cream cones off my big wheel.

My point: this guy could be faking, could be legit. My money is faking but I don't have acces to his medical records.

[cosmicone]

34. I'll settle for your being undecided.

That is where the people should be instead of judging prematurely.

[AngryAmish]

37. That is the fair and legitimate opinion, my friend.

[Novara]

45. Absolutely

I had a brain injury when I had a bicycle accident and landed on my head, knocking me unconscious. Three years later I haven't recovered one single thing about the crash, just what I saw prior to it, and I don't even know how close in time it was to the accident. I fractured bones in my face in the impact, and was unconscious for at least 15 minutes.

It's no surprse to me he can't remember. Not at all.

[hedgehog]

35. I'm with you there - when I came to, it took several minutes to figure out that there had

been an accident. I was more concerned with why the windshield had suddenly crizzled and what that dirty rag on the steering wheel was.

[exboyfil]

9. Well the cell phone records should clear that up

God help him if he was texting because no person will.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Interesting that his lawyer is filling the airways with engineer's defense.

Good luck selecting any jury pool.

[Yo_Mama]

15. It's perfectly possible. I had a head injury in a car accident when I was young, and I lost a chunk

I remember after the accident (although there are a few gaps) and I remember up to a bit before the accident, but not the accident.

The way it was explained to me, memory formation is a separate process, and the severe head injury temporarily stopped that process, so I lost a little bit of memory recording. If the brain injury is too severe, that may be for some time. In my case in the end it could not have been more than a couple of minutes, but the blank starts just before the accident.

It still doesn't change his liability, but let the accident investigation continue. It's clear that speeding was a major factor.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

22. It's very common for a person involved in an accident

and who has suffered a head injury not to be able to remember the accident. It's impossible to draw any inferences about what he might or might not have done.

[Ruby the Liberal]

26. A co-worker was on his way to work

when a loaded tractor trailer ran a red light at full speed and T-boned him on a rural road. They had to cut him out of the car. For the first few weeks, he didn't remember where he worked, or that his wife was pregnant with their first child. Once his memory started coming back (about 3 weeks in), he was convinced that he was hit walking to work as he didn't even remember driving. He lives 20 something miles from the office. His memory is slowly coming back in general, but he still thinks he was walking, and that was 6 weeks ago.

[Xithras]

3. It's certainly possible.

Memory loss after a head trauma is common. I still remember waking up in an ambulance wondering how the heck I'd got there about 25 years ago. Turned out that I'd taken a walk, got into a fight, and got whacked over the head and knocked out. When I came to, I'd lost several hours worth of memories BEFORE the fight. I remembered sitting in my living room watching TV, and then waking up in the hospital.

Apparently my friend and my girlfriend had come over, we'd gone to grab lunch, hung out for a while, and I was walking home alone when the fight started, but I don't remember any of that. I don't even know what the fight was about, or who it was that hit me. I only know that it was one guy because someone else saw the fight and called the police.

Even after waking up, my memory was spotty. I remember being in the ambulance and being confused. I remember the doctor in the ER doing a couple of tests, and then I remember being home in bed. I don't remember anything in between.

Head trauma does funny things.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. That's a very weird feeling, isn't it? Did you ever get the memories back?

There is a drug Dr.s use for anesthesia, which screws with your memories.
They gave it to me with 2nd birth.
And to this day I have no memory of going to the hospital, being in the hospital, no memory at all of the birth, nor of coming home.

Really pissed about that.

[Xithras]

21. A few flashes here and there.

But nothing coherent. I never remembered anything about the fight at all, but I did eventually remember a few flashes of the lunch with my friend and girlfriend (now my wife of over 20 years). Even with that, I'm not entirely sure that they're real memories and not just false memories I unintentionally created by trying so hard to remember. I struggled with it for a while because the police theory was that it was a failed mugging, and I REALLY wanted to remember something about the person I was fighting with. To this day I don't remember a thing about the guy or what led up to the fight.

And yes, it's a weird feeling.

[rocktivity]

39. They give you that particular anesthesia

so that you don't remember how much it hurt.


rocktivity

[geek tragedy]

4. convenient nt

[heaven05]

6. 40 years ago

I suffered a major trauma to my head after getting hit by a phone booth that was dislodged in a car accident. I was a pedestrian waiting for a bus. It hit me in the head and knocked me off the overpass to the road 30 feet below. I was lucky no cars ran over me. I only know what happened because of a police report of what witnesses saw. To this day I do not remember the accident or my involvement. Nothing. So considering his head injury, I can believe it.

[MADem]

10. Wow--somebody up there likes you.

Talk about luck. A miracle, first, that you survived the impact with the phone booth, but then a 30 foot fall?

DAMN!!!!!!

Did you heal all right? I imagine that must have been traumatic, that process, as well.

What an experience! I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but I must say, I'm glad you survived it!

[heaven05]

28. thanks

Broken ribs, skull fracture, concussion, 3 vertebrae cracked by landing on the curb below along with dislocated hip. Collapsed lungs, assorted bruises and cuts. I healed well, it did take about 4-5 months at my sisters country home, just taking it easy and doing my followups properly....., just no memory of that day/accident. Strange, I always thought. But probably a good thing.

That engineer may never remember and I'd believe him. I just feel very sad for the people injured and dead and their families. Difficult days ahead and I send good vibes in their direction(s).

[MADem]

32. It will be a tough road for those families.

I've taken that train a number of times--I am not going that way anymore on a regular basis, but I could be found on that route often in the past. You just never know what will happen, day to day.

I'm sure you'd probably as soon have had no "expertise" in this area, but it's wonderful that you came through OK. Since you're the voice of experience in this area, I'll go along with your assessment about the engineer!

I guess he has agreed to speak to investigators, but if he doesn't remember it will be hard for him to contribute much, I'm guessing.

[okaawhatever]

11. Wow sounds like you're lucky to be alive nt

[wordpix]

24. sounds like being given an anaesthetic during surgery

I was in surgery 5 hrs. and only remember being wheeled out of the waiting cubicle where the docs and nurses come to check on you and make sure you're ready for surgery and have signed the forms. Then I was in my hospital room after losing certain body parts in the surgery, saying, "I'm so thirsty," and my SIL gave me a little wet sponge for my lips. Total brain erasure and it was a good thing.

[HassleCat]

7. Not BS

In 1974, I crashed on my bicycle. To this day, I have absolutely no memory of the crash. The last I remember, I was loading my backpack with books and snacks. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital. The crash happened about 2 miles from where I started, so there a gap of several minutes. I understand this is not unusual for people injured from hard physical impact.

[sorefeet]

14. I really do think if the damn train was

going over 100 miles an hour I would have known it long before it crashed. It's a 50 mile an hour zone. He was sleeping or on a phone.

[Fuddnik]

17. Probable fatigue from not enough time off.

I was an Engineer for 31 years. We used to have an hours of service law, that mandated that you couldn't be on duty for more than 12 hours, and have at least 8 hours, uninterrupted time off between shifts. That wasn't enough then, but they have been tinkering with it for the last 10-12 years, to allow more work and less rest, at the carriers request.

When I started in 1971, laws mandated that there be at least 5 crewman on a train. Now it's down to 2, and sometimes 1.

And I also had a motorcycle accident in 1980, that I still have no memory of, except for 4 of the 6 weeks I spent in the hospital afterward.

[BlueEye]

20. It is certainly possible. I would imagine the NTSB will investigate the fatigue issue thoroughly.

In a number of airline accidents in the past ten years, I know it has been a major factor, particularly with regard to regional airline crews.

This website claims to describe the new FRA Hours of Service laws specific to Amtrak and commuter engineers. The rules are fairly nuanced, but it appears as though 12 hours of consecutive duty is still the federally imposed limit.

http://utu.org/2011/08/15/fras-final-hos-rules-for-passenger-commuter-service/

[jwirr]

19. What the investigators need to know is what was going on before the accident anyhow. Why was

the train going 107 mph? Did he override the safety features in order to make up time when he left the station late? What was he doing just before the crash? We know he put on the brakes. What else and why did he wait so long to brake? Was there any equipment failure that he noticed?

[Ruby the Liberal]

27. They weren't late

They left 30th Street Station on time.

[jwirr]

41. I of course do not know but I did hear two people on the train last night on MSNBC say they where.

And I heard the interview with the person who talked about the engineer being able to over ride safety features. Lawrence O told him they were late.

That is why I asked that question.

[Ruby the Liberal]

42. Wasn't challenging you

Local news reported that the 188 left DC and Philly on schedule - so was just adding that.

[jwirr]

43. Okay thanks.

[sendero]

25. Not remembering..

... is probably his best legal strategy. However, unless they find evidence of mechanical failure related to the speed of the train, I think he is going to prison.

[ManiacJoe]

31. Do passenger trains have the same "dead-man" buttons

that freight trains have?

[BumRushDaShow]

36. The Lead NTSB guy said that they don't.

During his news conference this afternoon he chuckled that they don't use those anymore in the passenger trains but they use some sort of alert/alarm system that generates alarms to the engineer if he/she ceases to engage/interact with the control system. But then he said that in this case, having the PTC would have actively overridden the manual controls and slowed the train if it was exceeding the speed limit. He posed the issue of "alarms" via an analogy of how certain people may respond to an alarm clock while in a deep sleep. I.e., when the alarm goes off, they often reach over, turn it off, and then fall back into the deep sleep, essentially making the alarm ineffective for its purpose.

[LiberalElite]

40. Yes, I thought "stupor induced by cell phone" at the outset too -

He just applies the brakes after it's already going more than 100 mph? WTF? But, I find it hard to believe that this engineer would be at fault. I've read elsewhere that this was his dream job. Trains were his life. He participated on various discussion boards having to do with trains and transportation and his posts appeared to be very responsible and concerned with safety.

[B2G]

44. If he remembers going into the curve

and braking, then he has plenty of recollection of the events.

He also remembers coming to and dialing 911.

So what exactly is it that he can't remember??