Atlanta Injury Lawyer Blog

The news of another train collision was frightening and unwelcome. This time in Washington, D.C., on the Metro commuter trains.One train rear-ended another on the same track which, obviously, is not supposed to happen and you can bet doesn’t happen absent someone’s negligence or carelessness. The crash resulted in the loss of nine lives and injuries to 80 other passengers.

How do you miss a full size commuter train on the track ahead of you?

Could the answer be the train operator was texting while driving? It’s too early to tell, but if it turns out it’s because the at-fault train operator was texting while driving, I won’t be shocked and I’ll say you heard it here first. When I first heard of this horrible tragedy, I immediately thought of the MARTA train operator here in Atlanta who was caught texting while he was supposed to have been operating the train. But a diligent MARTA passenger caught him red-handed.

Have you seen this video? http://www.11alive.com/video/default.aspx?playerId=newsmaker&maven_playlistId=1f23dc40ee67898d157716d17d3efded65dbd23b&maven_referrer=mrss&maven_referralPlaylistId=1f23dc40ee67898d157716d17d3efded65dbd23b&maven_referralObject=1138688802 It is of a MARTA train operator texting on his cell phone while the train is running down the rail. The operator is texting on his cell phone while he is supposed to be driving a train carrying hundreds of Georgians just trying to get to their jobs safely. Unbelievable!

Congratulations goes to Everyday Georgia Citizen Matthew Jones, who uses the MARTA subway train system to get to work and relies on the train operators to get him to work, and then back home, safely every day. Matthew spotted the train operator texting while the train was in operation on the tracks and took the smoking gun photo. Amazingly, the GM of MARTA says maybe the only thing that will happen to this train operator is a suspension. A slap on the hand! What will it take to insist on passenger safety? A train wreck while a MARTA operator is texting? Will that do the trick? We already know how deadly it can be for a train operator to be texting while he is operating a train, as evidenced by deadly train wrecks in Boston and in California (which I previously blogged about). Don’t we want to spare Georgia citizens that horror?

We should all be vigilant like Matthew Jones. When we see a MARTA bus driver or MARTA train operator operating his bus or his train in unsafe manner, we must report that to MARTA. MARTA buses are identified by a bus number on the outside. The next time you see a MARTA bus operator run a red light, or other similar dangerous behavior, call MARTA with that bus number and report what you saw. The same should be done if you observe a MARTA train operator texting while driving, or asleep at the switch. Maybe MARTA won’t do anything to the employee after just one complaint, but I would hope after more than one complaint the employee would get more than a mere slap on the hand. The more we do this, the safer our public transporatation will, hopefully, become. Be vigilant, Georgians!

Just like the Peanut Corporation of America in Blakely, Georgia, the Imperial Sugar Refinery in Savannah, Georgia knew of the dangers its plant exposed its employees and Georgia citizens to and did absolutely nothing. In an article today in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, it is obvious the sugar corporation deliberately exposed its employees to the very real chance of death by ignoring an expert consultant’s report warning the corporation’s executives of the danger. Which brings to mind the question: What is wrong with Corporate America? Has corporate greed become so all important that dollars over safety is a corporation’s creed now? Or is it that the past administration of the last eight years has permitted Corporate America to thumb its nose at corporate responsibility for the sake of unregulated profit such that even when human life hangs in the balance, the Almighty Corporation gets by with murder?
It is clear that in the case of the Savannah Sugar Refinery, the fourteen employees who died in the explosion and the dozens of other Georgians injured in it were asked to sacrifice too much for corporate greed. These Georgians are left with nothing but inadequate workers’ compensation claims now as the Imperial Sugar Refinery is protected from the rough justice of twelve jurors in the Georgia Civil Justice System by the “exclusive remedy” of the workers’ compensation system. And that is a crime.