Nine people died and dozens were seriously injured when two Red Line trains collided on June 22, 2009, near the Fort Totten station. Nearly three years later, as The Washington Examiner’s Kytja Weir first reported, Metro and three equipment manufacturers have finally admitted their culpability. However, while the confidential settlements reached in seven wrongful-death lawsuits spare both the transit agency and the victims’ families the high costs of litigation, they also allow Metro to avoid releasing any more details about the worst accident in its 36-year history.

In 2010, a highly critical report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board identified track circuit failures as the major cause of the Red Line crash. The report noted that Metro had previously ignored “parasitic oscillations” in 290 circuits, and that one in particular had been “failing consistently” since 1998. NTSB blamed Metro’s lack of a safety culture and its failure to maintain the automatic track system as contributing factors to the crash. Nonetheless, right after the NTSB released its report on the fatal crash, then Chairman Jim Graham insisted that the Metro Board could not have done anything to prevent it.