NEW YORK _ A Long Island Rail Road train's "erratic" movement just before it crashed in Brooklyn Wednesday and concerns about the locomotive engineer's health suggest that sleep apnea may have played a role in the accident that injured more than 100 people, a federal source said Friday.
The source, who was briefed by the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators determined that the train entered the terminal at 33 mph, and then slowed to 15 mph as required, but "the last three minutes showed an erratic pattern of acceleration and deceleration."
"It is these last three minutes that he (the engineer) does not remember," the source said.
The source said the train's speed moments before the crash ranged from 2 mph to 10 mph. Investigators said the train struck a bumping block at the end of the tracks at more than 10 mph. The speed limit in that area is 5 mph, LIRR officials have said.
"If you even hit the bumper you're supposed to do so at zero," the source said.
More than 100 people on the train were injured in the crash, none seriously.
The federal source added that the train's movement just before the crash and other factors have raised suspicion among investigators that the 50-year-old engineer, who has not been identified, suffered from obstructive sleep apnea _ a disorder that can contribute to fatigue.
NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson said Friday that it was too early to even consider a potential cause.
If the engineer is found to have sleep apnea, Knudson said, "that will certainly become part of the factual record. And whether that has any role in the probable cause of the accident, that's something we'll determine at that stage of the investigation."
In two recent fatal commuter-railroad accidents in the Northeast _ October's crash of a New Jersey Transit train in Hoboken and the December 2013 derailment of a Metro-North train in the Bronx _ federal officials said the engineers had sleep apnea.
Those, and other accidents, have led federal regulators to push for sleep disorder testing of locomotive engineers. After the Metro-North derailment, which killed four people, the MTA began a pilot program to test Metro-North engineers for sleep apnea.
