Amtrak train was speeding significantly before crash

Careening around a curve at almost three times the speed limit, an Amtrak train derailed and hurled passenger cars off an overpass and onto rush hour traffic below -- killing three people and injuring more than 100 others.

"We felt a little bit of a jolt, and then at a certain point we could hear crumpling of the train car, and we were catapulted into the seats in front of us," passenger Chris Karnes said.
The Amtrak Cascades 501 train was carrying 86 people on its first journey on a new service route from Seattle to Portland when it derailed Monday.
It's not clear why the train was traveling at 80 mph in a 30 mph zone, said National Transportation Safety Board member T. Bella Dinh-Zarr.
But this much we do know: The track had undergone millions of dollars of improvements and weeks of testing.
Yet Positive Train Control -- technology that automatically slows down and stops a speeding train -- wasn't activated, much to the dismay of the NTSB official.
"We have recommended PTC for decades," Dinh-Zarr told CNN on Tuesday. "Unfortunately the deadline was moved farther into the future, and every year that we wait to implement PTC to its fullest extent means that more people will be killed and injured."