Trucker Blamed in Fatal Train Wreck in 1999
Safety investigators found that a truck driver, who they suspect was fatigued, triggered a collision with an Amtrak train three years ago that killed 11 passengers and injured 122 others.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that John Stokes, driving a flat-bed trailer loaded with steel, used poor judgment on March 15, 1999, when he failed to yield to warning signals and tried to cross the tracks ahead of the train in Bourbonnais, 50 miles south of Chicago.
The City of New Orleans, traveling at 79 mph with 228 people aboard, struck the tail of Stokes’s truck. Both locomotives and 11 of the 14 cars derailed. Stokes suffered minor injuries.
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