We'll never know if he actually saw the signal.. As I recall, a railfan, claimed it was green... The problem with the timeline, is that he may have been already texting when he pulled out of Chatsworth, and he ran through the power switch... So much for the signal issues.

You and I have seen plenty lousy signals, both where they're dim and/or dirty. But, how many power switches lined against you have you run through, and didn't bother to notice, while operating a passenger train full of folks...? None, I'd suspect, since you are quite knowledgeable, experienced, understand the consequences, and have a track record where you acted appropriately when doing your job...

Sanchez was a complete loser. He had also been turned in by other crewmembers to Veolia. And you know, as a BLE officer, or from my experience as a UTU officer, in an industry where folks tend not to "rat out" fellow employees, just how f##ked up he was, just from knowing that fact.

Veolia was incompetent, unsafe, and in my opinion, even at the time they were contracted with, utterly unqualified (based on the utterly unqualified staff and management I interacted with), to run any kind of rail operation.

Veolia did nothing about Sanchez, nor did they take any of their other safety responsibilities or requirements seriously. And, this firm was let a contract to run ops at ML (which they utterly failed to comply with) for what was some pretty dubious political reasoning. Which is, of course, why Veolia ultimately paid out the $200 million to the victims of Chatsworth...