Track defects, human error primary causes of crude-oil train derailments

MOUNT CARBON, W.Va. — Track defects caused fiery crude-oil derailments that forced 1,100 people from their homes in this Appalachian village this year and killed 47 people in a Canadian town in 2013. In fact, a Dispatch analysis of federal records shows that track defects and human error are to blame for most railway incidents. Yet U.S. regulators have focused on tanker cars instead of the rails that carry the cars and millions of gallons of Bakken crude, a type of highly volatile oil from