WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board has called for on-track rail maintenance equipment to be equipped with collision avoidance technology that can detect people or objects prior to a crash.
The recommendation came as part of the final investigation report released today (Sept. 3, 2025) on an Aug. 4, 2023, accident in Great Barrington, Mass., where a Middlesex Corp. maintenance machine struck and killed a worker. [See “Victim identified in death at Massachusetts track project,” Trains.com, Aug. 26, 2023]. The NTSB investigation found that the operator of the drilling machine had no safety devices beyond a wide-angle mirror to look for hazards.
The call for collision avoidance technology was directed at the Federal Railroad Administration, all Class I railroads, and the two entities involved in this incident (the Housatonic Railroad Co. and Middlesex Corp. The report also calls on the FRA and Class I railroads to require that maintenance machinery with booms or other extensions to be equipment with a people detection system covering the length of the boom or extension; and requests that the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Asosciation and the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association inform their members of the benefits of collision avoidance systems, as well as informing employees of the circumstances of this incident and the need for thorough job briefings.
The incident occurred when a tie-drilling machine was returning to the site of track work after being removed for repairs. During a 1.4-mile backup move to the job site, the driller operator did not see two employees who had continued to work at the job site and were on the track as the tie driller; one of those workers was struck and killed.
The accident report concluded that the probable cause of the incident was the driller operator’s failure to observe that the path of travel was clear. Contributing factors, the report says, were a lack of awareness of job tasks on the part of the Housatonic Railroad Co.’s worker in charge, which led to an inadequate job briefing; that worker’s lack of awareness of maintenance-machinery movements without his knowledge or authorization; the lack of a required second worker in charge for a second work group, and a lack of communications between the worker in charge and the second work group.
