MUNI

A lawsuit filed against the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District was recently rejected on appeal by an Alameda County Appeals Court.

The lawsuit was brought by Yang Ti and her husband, Pat Diao, against BART arising out of injuries that Ti sustained on a BART train. Ti was injured when the doors of the train closed on her as she attempted to board.

A trial court found that Ti failed to present sufficient evidence that the train operator was negligent or that the condition of the train doors constituted a “dangerous condition of public property that presented a substantial risk of injury to BART passengers.”

BART was able to show that the closing pressure of BART train doors was consistent with national standards and other transit agencies around the country. BART trains have a closing pressure of 15 pounds to a maximum of 30 pounds, and the BART train door incident rate is about one in 4.67 million.

Ti also claimed that unlike on other trains, the operator did not look out of the train to see whether passengers were attempting to enter the train late. Ti claimed that she looked around for the train operator upon getting stuck in the doors, but this contradicted her prior testimony that she was unable to see the front of the train when she was caught in the door.

Ti’s argument may have supported a lawsuit based on premises liability, but the appeals court found that it was insufficient to support a lawsuit based on vicarious liability for the train conductor’s conduct.

The Dolan Law Firm handles personal injury cases in San Francisco and throughout the Bay Area. If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, call us at 888-452-4752.

Case: Ti v. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, 2014 WL 844886, March 05, 2014

A Muni bus ran over the arm of a San Francisco bicyclist last Wednesday, and continued to drive down its route. The Muni accident is one of a number in the last few months involving pedestrians or bicyclists.

According to reports, Laila Brenner was riding her bike home from work when she changed lanes to avoid a double-parked car and was hit by a muni bus near the intersection of Columbus Avenue and Broadway. As Brenner fell to the ground the rear tire of the bus rolled over her arm.

Muni maintains that it is unclear whether Brenner crashed due to the negligence of the bus, or because of the illegally parked vehicle. They further stated that the bus suspension was designed in such a way that driver would not have been aware that the back wheel had run anything over.

Many San Francisco residents may remember a tragic 2009 MUNI accident in which 46 passengers and two train operators were injured at the city’s West Portal station. The incident occurred in July when an incoming train failed to stop correctly and proceeded to crash into another light rail vehicle already parked at the station.

New evidence in this case reveals that the driver of the runaway MUNI train had blacked out seconds before the collision. Before the driver lost consciousness, however, he turned off the vehicle’s automatic brake system created to prevent such an accident from occurring. The National Transportation Safety Board has concluded that both driver and the MUNI organization as a whole share responsibility for this train accident.

When questioned as to why he turned off the automatic braking controls before entering West Portal station, the driver told investigators that it was a common tactic used by MUNI drivers to ease the train’s approach to the platform. Official MUNI policy states that all drivers must contact the organization’s control center and ask for permission to turn off the automatic brakes, yet several MUNI employees confirmed that this policy was rarely enforced.

After the 2009 accident, MUNI leadership began forming stricter rules around this issue and even threatened to fire operators who failed to follow the official guidelines before turning off a train’s automatic brakes. Findings from the National Transportation Safety Board indicate that if MUNI had adopted this attitude in 2009 that summer’s serious accident may never have occurred.

Source: San Francisco Gate, “MUNI driver disabled controls, blacked out.” Marcus Wohlsen, 28 April 2011

Last week, our blog highlighted the California Public Utilities Commission report accusing the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency of regularly committing explicit passenger safety violation. The report revealed a variety of issues, including track defects and problems with the subway train control system.

In the midst of MUNI’s struggle to defend their safety record, a new accident took place last week which sent six passengers to the hospital. The MUNI accident occurred when the public transportation vehicle collided with a big-rig truck while operating along the KT-Ingleside/Third Street line. Investigators have yet to fully determine whether the MUNI operator or the truck driver was at fault.

The crash occurred in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood on Monday morning after the morning rush hour commute. According to a MUNI spokesman, the big rig truck stuck the MUNI vehicle on its right side, damaging the bus and injuring six passengers.

Officers from the San Francisco Fire Department arrived at the scene and transported the six injured victims to a local hospital. Representatives from the Fire Department later stated that the victims, fortunately, suffered only minor injuries and were all expected to live.

MUNI service resumed as normal an hour after the crash, but this latest smear across the public transportation organization’s safety record is not as easily forgotten. Even though initial reports indicate that the big rig driver may have been at fault for the collision, police investigators have not confirmed exactly how the accident occurred. San Francisco citizens will have to wait and see whether this accident was the result of a trucker’s careless driving, a MUNI failure to protect the safety of its passengers, or a combination of the two.

Source: SF Appeal, “Reports: Big Rig ‘T-Boned’ Muni Metro Train.” 21 March 2011