When the news hits of an extreme accident your whole life can change in a matter of minutes. Your heart begins to race so fast and so loud you can feel it through your ears. Your blood is rushing and your cheeks become red and you feel hotter than you ever have before. You don't know if you will ever have the opportunity to see someone you love ever again.
Thursday morning, September 29th, I woke up like many others, thinking it would be just like any other day. I went to class and sipped my coffee as a friend asked if I had heard about the train accident in Hoboken. I hadn't heard about it and as she spoke it clicked that my dad works in Hoboken and takes the train to work. My heart sunk and extreme panic set in as I tried to call him and was receiving no answer. A billion thoughts ran through my head. I couldn't remember the last conversation we had or the last time I saw him because all I could comprehend was never seeing him again and my eyes filled with tears... and then he answered.
I am extremely lucky to be able to say I have my father, but it's situations like such that make us more appreciative when we should be all the time. We live in a way that it takes tragic accidents for us to realize every moment should be cherished. For me, this train accident felt like the end of my world.
This NJ Transit train started its route in Spring Valley, New York as it did every morning. It was approaching the end of its seventeen-stop route in the Hoboken Terminal at approximately 8:45am when chaos occurred. Passengers and bystanders perceived that the train just didn't stop and instead rammed the station and departed from the tracks at a speed much greater than the limit of ten.
Over a hundred people were injured and a young women even lost her life. Reporters stated that everyone was helping one another out of the debris into safety. The prominent concerns now are the cause for this horrific accident and precautions to prevent anything similar from happening in the future.
The engineer of the train, Thomas Gallagher, has been working for the NJ Transit since he was nineteen. He is a husband and father who has been perceived as the main culprit for this accident by many. Some have even questioned whether this was intentional and thats extremely disappointing, but representative of our current society. The fact that this is even a thought, proves what a terrible world we live in where such a hypothesis is easily accepted. A similar accident occurred in 2011 with this same track which to me is evidence that this was a mechanical issue.
The true source of this crash will hopefully soon be discovered, but for now I say we focus on safety precautions to prevent future tragedies. Officials stated that the train was a car short which forced many people to stand. Standing in general can cause for a bumpy ride, but especially if a crash occurs. Forcing NJ Transit to provide enough seats for every passenger is an idea I believe would be effective in preventing injuries.
Many have been saying that seat belts would have caused less injuries, but i disagree. There are seat belts on busses and rarely does anyone even buckle. It would be extremely hard to enforce buckling on a train when over two-hundred people can be on board at any given time. Some crashes have even reported that buckles caused more internal damage than preventing external injuries.
It is crazy to imagine that in the blink of an eye anything can change. This accident is an unfortunate reminder that life is short and as humans we should be much kinder and more considerate to one another. Hopefully moving forward appropriate measures are taken to decrease the injuries and casualties if such an event occurs again. But the greatest take away from this accident would be to live in the moment because at any given time everything can change.
