Following the fatal Metra crash, the NTSB says the release of passengers through train windows has been a concern for decades.

CHICAGO (CBS) – Christina LopezThe 72-year-old died on Wednesday after being thrown off a Metra train during a horrific crash in which a train knocked down a truck in Clarendon Hills.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that they believe the force of the impact was the reason that Lopez was ejected through the train window.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday that they believe the force of the impact was the reason that Lopez was ejected through the train window.

In fact, caring for windows when it comes to Metra passenger safety has been around for over 40 years. We began addressing the issue after a viewer sent us a video of the crash in Clarendon Hills on Wednesday.

Immediately after the train crashed into the truck, the Metra passenger was thrown out the window. We blurred the ejection, but it is clear that it hit the window – or shifted, or smashed it when the impact knocks her off the train.

This attracts the attention of the NTSB, a government agency investigating railway accidents.

In the report On May 12, 2015, the Amtrak 188’s passenger train derailed Philadelphia – as a result of which eight people were lost, – summed up NTSB: “If the windows of cars remained intact and fixed in the cars, some passengers would not be ejected and would probably have survived the accident.”

Meanwhile, with reference to the derailment of December 1, 2013 Metro train-Northern Railway in the Sputen-Duyville area of ​​the Bronx, New York, the NTSB found that some passengers died “as a result of ejection through damaged or shifted car windows.” Four people died in that accident.

“An absolute tragedy,” said the director of the University of Illinois at the Chicago Transportation Center, P.S.

Sriraj says any deaths of passengers on trains happen rarely, but still.

“But still, you don’t want to minimize it as a rare case and then not focus on improving this aspect of rail safety,” he said.

On June 10, 1971, 11 people died in lower Salem, Illinois, after being thrown through the side windows of an Amtrak City of New Orleans train that broke when their train derailed and overturned.

A 2015 derailment report in Philadelphia noted that in 1972, the NTSB “noted that ejections from windows made up the majority of passenger deaths”.

But more than 40 years later the NTSB has been concerned about throwing passengers out the windows.

“As it has re-emerged, perhaps now is the time to focus on this particular aspect of railway safety,” Sriraj said.

After the New York-North subway train derailed in 2013, the NTSB recommended that the Federal Railway Administration, which complies with rail safety rules, “develop a performance standard to ensure that windows are maintained … during an accident.”

Today, the NTSB still calls the request “open”, so, in their opinion, it was not fulfilled.

A representative of the FRA made the following statement:

“The Federal Railway Administration actively supports the current NTSB investigation and is fully committed to the Council’s overt recommendation. Developing passenger rail vehicle windows for optimal performance in all accident scenarios is a long-standing problem in the rail industry. The FRA has an active research program focused on this issue.”

The study is being conducted on behalf of the FRA by the John A. Volpe National Transportation Center. The study is designed to assess all aspects of train windows – including glazing systems, holding passengers in accidents, emergency exit plans, rescue access and impact resistance, sources said.

Late Thursday, our CBS 2 photographer saw an investigator filming a train window from the crash site in Clarendon Hills. We don’t know if this window broke.