Accident Report Detail

On August 5, 2006, about 3:53 p.m., a 5-foot 6-inch, 110-pound, 18-year-old female passenger exiting a Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) commuter train at Woodside station in Queens, New York, fell through a 7 7/8-inch horizontal gap between the rail car and the station platform. (See figure 1.) After falling through the gap to track level beneath the platform, she did not follow instructions from the train conductor and her friends to remain still and wait to be rescued. Instead, the woman crawled under the platform and into the path of an oncoming passenger train. She sustained fatal injuries. Toxicology testing showed that her blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was 0.23 gram percent. The weather at the time of the accident was sunny, clear, and warm.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the passenger fatality on August 5, 2006, at the Long Island Rail Road Woodside station in Queens, New York, was the passenger falling through a gap between the rail car and the platform while attempting to disembark the train, not following instructions from the train conductor to remain still until help arrived, and then crawling under the platform and into the path of a moving train on the opposite side of the platform. Contributing to the accident was the passenger's alcohol-impaired condition.