INVESTIGATION: Amtrak advised to install Automatic Speed Control 2 decades ago

NEW YORK (WABC) -- How can a horrific train derailment like the one in Philadelphia be prevented from ever happening again?

Well it turns out Amtrak was advised more than two decades ago to install Automatic Speed Control which slows down the train if the engineer is going too fast around a curve, the train will automatically slow down.

That deadly curve in Philadelphia will have that by year's end. But why didn't it have it before?

As the eighth victim was recovered from the Amtrak wreckage, the head of the railroad talked about future safety.

"I'm committing to meeting the requirement of positive train control. That will happen on the northeast corridor by the end of this year," said Joe Boardman, the CEO of Amtrak.

But long before Positive Train Control, there existed a simple half-century old technology that automatically slows trains going too fast on curves. It's called Automatic Cab Signal Control.

"The technology was here and it wasn't put to use," said Pat Riley, a former federal railroad safety inspector.

Riley says he and his team told Amtrak 25 years ago to install the Automatic Speed Control after a near derailment at this dangerous curve in Elizabeth New Jersey.

"Had they listened to you 25 years ago and put in automatic speed control the Philly accident would have never happened," Eyewitness News Investigative Reporter Jim Hoffer said.

"That's correct, after the train got around this curve at high rate speed here in Elizabeth we tried to stop it at other locations," Riley said.

"They didn't listen?" Hoffer said.

"No," Riley said.

He says higher-ups at the FRA and Amtrak ignored their recommendation until a year later when 72 passengers were injured in an Amtrak derailment on a curve in Boston.

The NTSB blamed Amtrak for "failure to have advanced warning devices for speed reduction". Soon after, Amtrak started installing the Automatic Speed Control on some of its dangerous curves, but left others, such as the one in Philadelphia, unprotected.

"It's negligence, is it?" Hoffer said.

"I just want to say the recommendation was out there, it's a shame it wasn't heeded," Riley said.

For reasons this former safety inspector can't understand, Amtrak never installed it on the Philadelphia curve even though it's one of the trickiest on the northeast corridor with the speed limit dropping from 80 to 50 miles per hour heading into the curve.

25 years after he and his inspectors recommended the "easy fix", no automatic speed enforcement had been installed to protect passengers from being one human error away from a deadly accident.

"It disappoints me to see recommendations made weren't implemented properly and when I saw this accident I was devastated," Riley said.

We now know that had the train been headed in the other direction, it would have had Automatic Braking Protection.

Eyewitness News has been told installing it on the other side of the track would have cost Amtrak $10,000 to $20,000 and could have been done in a couple of weeks.