The manufacturer of Walt Disney World’s monorail trains warned against the kind of reverse driving that contributed to the system’s first fatal crash this past summer, according to documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.
An operating manual written for the Disney trains by Bombardier Inc. warned that driving the vehicles in reverse “is a potentially hazardous operation even under the best conditions†and “strongly recommended†that an observer be stationed at the opposite end of a train whenever one is backing up.
The July 5 accident occurred as a Disney train was supposed to be moving off of the resort’s Epcot loop at the end of a work day, a process that requires the train to move in reverse through a track switch and onto a short spur leading to one of the system’s Magic Kingdom loops. But the track switch was not activated that night, so the train wound up reversing back down the Epcot loop instead, hitting another train and killing the second train’s 21-year-old driver, Austin Wuennenberg of Kissimmee.
At the time of the crash, Disney’s monorail policies did not require that someone be watching the back of the train being driven in reverse. So there was no spotter in place who could have warned the driver that the switch had not moved and the train was backing down the wrong track.
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