A lot of people will be staying out of the first and last cars on the Washington, D.C. subway system in coming days.

That's what the reaction was back in 1996 when just a few miles north of yesterday's subway crash in DC, an Amtrak train collided with the commuter train that I take to work every day.

For several weeks, the front car was almost empty on the way in to Washington, as the regular riders packed the train cars behind it, knowing that 11 people had died in that wreck.

Little by little they all filtered back on my train, which operates partly on tracks that run parallel to the subway from Capitol Hill to just before the Beltway.

I'm sure there will be some today in the subway who will stay away from the front and back cars, worried by the accident.

As for where I was, well, I was busy typing away on my health care blog for Tuesday when we zipped by the location of the accident, just 25 minutes before it happened.

As I'm typing this after 9:30pm, I can hear the train whistles from my house, meaning that my trains have started running again, past the site of the worst crash in the 33 year history of the Washington, D.C. subway system.

My heart goes out to the families of those who died.  I haven't forgotten those conductors who died thirteen years ago on our line.

The subway trains involved were heading towards D.C. around 5pm, and while they had a lot of people on them, it would have been much worse if trains going out of town had been involved.

One had stopped, waiting for the train in front to move on just south of the Fort Totten station, which isn't far from the Maryland-DC border, near Catholic University.

Before the first train could move, it was hit from behind by a train going south.  The conductor of the train was killed - that person would have been directly at the point of impact.

Investigators will certainly be focusing on whether the signals did not work, or whether one was missed by that train's operator.  Unfortunately, human error is all too often the explanation in these situations.