NTSB Releases Report On Disney Monorail Death
LAKE BUENA VISTA (CBSMiami/AP) — Human error is to blame for a monorail crash that killed a Walt Disney World worker in 2009, according to a federal agency.
The report released Monday by the National Transportation Safety Board found the crash was caused by a failure to properly position a track switch. The report also faulted a monorail manager for failing to verify the position of the track switch.
The report says that at the time of the accident the manager was at a restaurant, remotely filling in for a monorail coordinator who had gone home sick.
Disney worker Austin Wuennenberg was killed on Sunday, July 5, 2009 when two monorails collided on the fixed guideway system within the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista. At the time of the accident, there was an operator and six passengers on board one monorail and one operator onboard the second monorail. His mother has a filed a lawsuit against Disney. The NTSB also determined that contributing to the accident was Walt Disney World Resort's lack of standard operating
procedures which led to an unsafe practice when reversing trains on the monorail system.
Disney's chief safety officer says the resort has been working with NTSB officials and that the monorail has new safety procedures in place.
The accident caused $24 million in damages.
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