December 2013 Spuyten Duyvil derailment
On the morning of December 1, 2013, a Metro-North Railroad Hudson Line passenger train derailed near the Spuyten Duyvil station in the New York City borough of the Bronx. Four of the 115 passengers were killed and another 61 injured; the accident caused $9 million worth of damage. It was the deadliest train accident within New York City since a 1991 subway derailment in Manhattan, and the first accident in Metro-North's history to result in passenger fatalities. The additional $60 million in legal claims paid out as of 2020 have also made it the costliest accident in Metro-North's history. Early investigations found that the train had gone into the curve where it derailed at almost three times the posted speed limit. The engineer, William Rockefeller, later admitted that before reaching the curve he had gone into a "daze", a sort of highway hypnosis. The leader of the National Transportation Safety Board team investigating said it was likely that the accident would have been prevented had positive train control been installed per a prior federal mandate requiring its installation by 2015.
