NYC Transit Hits Big Safety Milestone
The Metropolitan Transit Authority has implemented classes and new safety regulations to prevent worker fatalities in the future.
The New York Transit System is now in its second-safest period for workers in decades; the most recent employee fatality occurred in 2007. Since 1946, there have been 240 employee fatalities recorded by the 468-station system, one of the nation's busiest.
Prior to 1946, reliable records weren't managed. But an agency official announced Feb. 10 that more than 2,100 days has passed since the last time a Metropolitan Transit Authority worker died on the job, according to the New York Daily News.
In 2007, after the death of a worker who was hit by a train, the presidents of both NYC Transit and the Transport Workers Union joined forces to impose safer regulations and mandates for train crews and dispatch employees to prevent future accidents.
These efforts to prevent fatalities included a recent class for transit employees at a training center in Brooklyn. With everything from tattered clothes and boots from a worker injured in an explosion to 47 silhouettes against the wall that represent the number of workers killed since 1970, the class conveyed the seriousness of the topic and the importance preventing future deaths.