The investigation in the deadly train collision that killed 25 people and injured many more continues to get more complicated,
with new facts coming to contradict findings by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Three witnesses at the Chatsworth Metrolink station said they saw the commuter train had a green light just before the collision with the freight train. That is the opposite of what the National Transportation Safety Board concluded, whose investigation revealed that the commuter train missed a red light.

The witnesses have already spoken with federal investigators, and seem to stick to their stories. This of course raises questions on the part of the blame the commuter train engineer, who also died in the crash, had.

The initial investigation by the National Transportation Board revealed that Robert Sanchez, the Metrolink commuter train engineer, who also died in the crash, was sending text messages from his cell phone just seconds before the impact.

According to investigators, he exchanged text messages with two teenage boys, apparently railroad enthusiasts, throughout his shift, and at the time of the impact, the engineer is believed to have been distracted.

In this case in particular, it’s hard to establish who or what was responsible for the accident. While some say it was a human error, others believe the lack of an adequate technology to stop human errors from provoking such accidents is to blame.

The technology, which could stop trains from missing a red light, is quite expensive, and railroad companies have not been very keen on adopting it. On the other hand, safety regulators have also temporarily banned the use of cell phones by train operators during shift hours.

Investigators in the case believe the accident was preventable, and all the drastic measures being taken now are just another sign that it takes a tragedy for the necessary safety measures to be taken. Hopefully, there won’t be any other crashes such as this one in the future.