Eighteen errors lines up to cause last summer's catastrophic derailment of a runaway train in the Quebec town of Lac-Mégantic, Canadian accident investigators said Tuesday, concluding an investigation that has revealed serious safety lapses in the transport of crude oil through Canada and the United States. Among the factors: a "weak safety culture" in the railroad that transported the oil; a government agency that required safety plans from industry but did little to check them; and a train that consisted almost entirely of substandard tanker cars. Those tanker cars -- known as DOT 111s -- still carry the bulk of the oil from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota to ports on the east coast of the United States and Canada, although both countries -- spurred by the Lac-Mégantic tragedy -- are taking steps to phase them out.
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The Lac-Mégantic rail disaster of July 2013 killed 47 people,
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Canadian safety agency report faults railroad, government and train itself
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TSB: Accident may have been avoided if any one of 18 factors were not present
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Recent spike in rail shipments of oil surprised even government regulators, says TSB chair
Runaway train devastates @placeholder town: The route, the damage, the aftermath