San Francisco’s BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system wasn’t the world’s first automated transit system, or even the first in this country. But it was among the first all-new American rapid transit systems designed in the 20th century.
BART was also, I gather, among the first with trains that didn’t need drivers. Or, rather, didn’t need a human at the controls. An Automatic Train Control (ATC) system ran each train, and the network as a whole.1
Today I’ll be taking a quick look at how news media covered a BART accident that wasn’t particularly serious, and talk about what happened when a train and its driver didn’t communicate — plus whatever else comes to mind.
The Fleetingly Famous Fremont Flyer
![News photo from BARTchivees on Weebly.com: 'Fremont Flyer (10/2/1972) / ... [a train] overshot Fremont station and plowed into the parking lot, injuring four passengers and the train attendant. Fortunately, Washington Hospital is next door to Fremont station so the response was timely....](https://i0.wp.com/brendans-island.com/blogsource/20241028ff/20250204-fremont-flyer-orig_orig-658.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
BART opened on September 11, 1972. Five days later, about 100,000 folks had used the system: and kept riding the trains.
October 2, 1972, 10:15 a.m. or so, a two-car BART train started speeding up as it approached Fremont station and the end of that line.
The (human) driver took over, but the train was still going around 30 miles an hour when it reached the end of the tracks.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is that only four folks were hurt, none of them seriously.2
Even so, the accident shouldn’t have happened.
But I didn’t see it as proof that Automatic Train Control systems were a menace to life, liberty, and paid vacations. That’s partly because I remembered what can happen with humans at the controls.
A recurring news item during my salad days involved a slightly injured truck driver and one or more dead families.
That SNAFU got sorted out when shipping company bosses realized that letting their drivers sleep while they weren’t driving saved money.
Another recurring news item was the train operator who kept out of sight until he could pass a drug test. That got sorted out, too: eventually. These days, it’s only discussed in the context of what my country’s self-defined best and brightest feel is important.3
Basically, I didn’t have a problem with trusting a driver that can’t fall asleep at the wheel, or decide that this is a good day to get stoned.
ROBOT TRAIN RUNS AMOK! CHAOS RIDES THE RAILS!
Anyway, back in October of 1972, a two-car BART train overshot its last station, rolled into national headlines, and hung around.
I didn’t keep clippings, and don’t remember the all the details.
But I do remember the message: a computer-operated train had imperiled the lives of hapless passengers — who had been on a computer-operated train — which was run by computers, not regular human drivers the way trains should be run.
Then, as the news was turning our attention to other matters — in the last paragraph of one of the last articles covering the Fremont Flyer — I read a single sentence: stating that a human had been at the controls when the train rolled into a parking lot.
I was impressed: not favorably, but I was impressed. Particularly since news coverage had been focusing on fears of the newfangled technology.
It wasn’t until I started researching this post that I learned why the accident happened.
As it turns out, the ATC really had glitched.4
“…On October 2, failure of a tiny crystal in a train’s on-board control circuitry caused a two-car train to enter the Fremont Station too fast. Failing to stop completely, one of the cars passed through a safety sand barrier at the end of the platform, coming to rest on a soft dirt incline. A few passengers were bruised, but none was seriously injured. Engineers judged recurrence of the accident to be extremely remote; however, circuitry was designed in all control cars (A-cars) to eliminate any possibility of a repeat failure….”
(“BART HISTORY” , as written by Justin Roberts of the Contra Costa Times, compiled anonymously (ca. 1972))
Okay: discussing “a tiny crystal” wouldn’t have been as dramatic as presenting the potential perils of a runaway robot train.
But I think journalists can write clear, coherent, and accurate reports of events.
When they haven’t been tasked with inflaming the proletariat, raising consciousness, calling patriots to action, or otherwise snookering their readers.
What I see in “BART HISTORY”, as compiled from articles in the Contra Costa Times, is useful knowledge: not dramatic, but useful.
And, in a way, reassuring.
The odds of that crystal glitch happening again were “extremely remote”. But, even though it might never happen again, the circuits were redesigned: changing the odds from barely nonzero to zero.
Whether that glitch could have been spotted before October 2, 1972: that’s another topic.
The Train That Left Its Human Behind
As I said last month, I liked San Francisco’s public transportation system, and used BART fairly often. That was in 1978 and 1979, when the self-driving trains were still fairly new.
Besides the passengers, each train had a token human up front.
That’s how I saw it, at least.
I was in my late 20s, and saw the driver/operator as essentially window dressing: someone whose job was mainly reassuring the passengers. Or maybe humoring BART’s executives, or the city’s lawyers.
That’s why a news item I saw in July of 1979 struck me as funny. It still does, although now I take the tale of the train that left its human behind a bit more seriously.
“…[BART General Manager Keith] Bernard said that in terms of safety there are cases, where an employee may take an action, or fail to take an action that could have direct catastrophic affect to BART passengers, other employees, or the system at large such as the Concord shop takeover.
“He said a recent example is an incident that occurred on July 20 [1979] in which a train operator left the cab of his train without authorization or proper precautions, to address a problem on the platform. While on the platform the train was automatically dispatched, with passengers, and proceeded to the next station unattended. The operator was given a hearing and immediately suspended for 30 days.
“‘Luckily nothing happened, but such an action on the part of an employee could have had serious consequences and BART’s ability to impose discipline in an expedient manner becomes paramount to effective management,’ Bernard said….”
(1979 News Releases, “V-104 BART To Appeal Court Order”; Mike Healy, Public Affairs Director, BART (August 6, 1979)) (emphasis mine)
Good news, nobody got hurt. Except for the driver. Whether or not being suspended for 30 days meant losing a month’s pay, it wouldn’t have looked good on his record.
Which reminds me: that “Concord shop takeover” involved disagreements between folks working in a BART maintenance shop and others who were higher up in the system.
A BART press release called the disagreements “an outrage”, and said that complaining about working conditions revealed “a public-be-damned attitude”.5
Maybe so. But I’ve spent my life in the lower half of the pay scale. Some of my bosses — and associates — were reasonable, considerate, and not clueless. Some weren’t.
I’d need far more information than I’ve got, before I’d try deciding how “outrageous” those workers and/or bosses were.
Daft Kids and Open Doors

I’ll let train operator Bob ‘Captain Jack’ Malito and shop superintendent Harold Engle explain what can happen when daft kids or cranky commuters run into a high-tech transit system:
“…What is most disconcerting is when people play with the train. I’ve had people come and act like they’re going to jump in front of my train and they jump up and down and laugh and think it’s really funny. They don’t realize what it does to me. The idea of running over people doesn’t sit well. A lot of people have never had that experience, I have and it doesn’t make you feel very good at all and it ruins the rest of your day. I’d really like people to respect trains because they’re nothing to play with.‘ …”
(“BART train operator brings a sense of humor to the afternoon commute” , interview with train operator Bob Malito / ‘Captain Jack’; News Article, BART (May 8, 2017)) (emphasis mine)“…’…Someone holding a door open, and it’s not malicious though some of the problems are obviously malicious, but a patron trying to get through, going to the airport and having his bag caught in the doors because the door was closing. So they pull it, that might misalign a seal, which all of a sudden then makes the ‘no doors closed’ indication so the operator can’t move the train without having all the doors closed.…’ ….”
(“The details on doors: How forcing your way into a BART car can harm service for thousands” , interview with shop superintendent Harold Engle; News Article, BART (September 28, 2017)) (emphasis mine)
So there you have it: folks riding BART depend on the trains, the drivers, the folks in maintenance, and others, to get them where they’re going. And they depend on their fellow-passengers to not mess with the system.
Now, finally: the story of a train and its human.
WAIT FOR ME!

I want it clearly understood that I don’t blame the train.
BART trains assumed that their human drivers were in the cab, unless their human told the train otherwise.
I sympathize with the driver, too, and I’m getting ahead of the story.
It was just another day on the job.
The train had pulled into a station, opened its doors to let folks on or off, and would have closed its doors. If some kids hadn’t decided that blocking doorways was fun.
BART trains run on strict schedules.
I gather that these schedules allow for short delays at any given station. But keeping folks waiting while a few kids play with the doors isn’t a good idea.
So the train’s human left the cab and got on the station platform. He talked with the kids, who let the doors close.
Just one problem. The driver hadn’t told the train that he was leaving the cab.
So, as soon as the train noticed that the doorways were clear, it shut its doors.
And rolled off to its next stop.
Leaving its human: who was running down the platform after it.
My guess is that most of the train’s passengers didn’t know that their human driver had left the train. And maybe still don’t, unless they happened to read about it in the paper.
Seriously?
Since I like technology, particularly new tech, the new consumer robots don’t terrify me.
And since I’ve worked with information technology for decades, I sincerely do not fear a Coming Robot Apocalypse.
On the other hand, someone could weave a yarn about the rise of the Roombas.
Or the insidious threat of LOOI Robots.
And how Eilik robots are even now conspiring with one another when we’re away from our desks.
I could also, more reasonably, think that someone might get overly-attached to a desktop robot, a steam iron, or a doorstop.
Scrambling our priorities, putting something other than love of God and neighbor in top place, is a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. It’s also profoundly not a new problem. (Catechism of the Catholic church, 1849) And that’s another topic.
A moral of “The Train That Left Its Human Behind”, if it has one, is that paying attention to what we’re doing matters. That includes paying attention to details that may not feel important. Like telling the train when you won’t be in the cab.
Ideally, the train could have noticed that its human wasn’t in place.
But give the BART system a break: this was 1979, and artificial intelligence was still far more artificial than intelligent.
About the train operator being a “token human”: decades later, I don’t think that’s the way it was, or is.
Humans: A Brief Meditation on Kids, Commuters, and Molten Ice Cream

Computers, robots, AI, whatever, are good at some things. Like running a train exactly on schedule.
But I think humans are, and will remain, better at handling situations that aren’t quite so cut and dried. Like dealing with daft kids, cranky commuters, or restaurant owners who find molten goo where a ton of ice cream had been.
The Saga of the Soggy Store is a customer service call I took while in San Francisco: and yet another story, for another day.
How I see kids, computers, crosswords; and why I don’t think we’re doomed:
- “Kids, a Subway Station, and Offhand Advice”
(January 18, 2025) - “Truth, Beauty, and the Evening News”
(June 15, 2024) - “Choices, Change, Technology, and Using Our Brains”
(November 4, 2023) - “ChatGPT and the End of Civilization as We Know It”
(April 15, 2023) - “Crosswords! Or, the End of Civilization As We Know It”
(March 26, 2022)
1 More than you need or maybe want to know about:
- Wikipedia
- Automatic train operation
- History of Bay Area Rapid Transit
- History of train automation (“This article needs additional citations for verification….”)
- Port Island Line (“…an urban automated guideway transit (AGT) system in Kobe, Japan, operated by Kobe New Transit….”)
- Punktförmige Zugbeeinflussung (“…an intermittent cab signalling system and train protection system….”)
- BART.gov
- “BART HISTORY” , as written by Justin Roberts of the Contra Costa Times, compiled anonymously (ca. 1972)
- A History of BART: The Concept is Born
2 An accident, and lessons learned:
- Wikipedia
- BART.gov
- “BART HISTORY” , as written by Justin Roberts of the Contra Costa Times, compiled anonymously (ca. 1972)
- “Fremont Flyer“
- “We’re Off and Running: BART’s First Decade in Operation 1972 – 1982“
BARTchives
3 Parts of my past, seen through a current cultural kaleidoscope:
- “Invisible (Black) Epidemiologies: The Function of White Hegemony in Drug Epidemics”
Udodiri Okwandu, Projects at Harvard (2018) cited in “Reframing the Gothic: Race, Gender, & Disability in Multiethnic Literature” , Ashely B. Tisdale, University of South Florida (March 2021) - Samuel K. SKINNER, Secretary of Transportation, et al., Petitioners v. RAILWAY LABOR EXECUTIVES’ ASSOCIATION et al.
Supreme Court (Argued November 2, 1988; Decided March 21, 1989) via LII (Legal Information Institute), Cornell Law School - Railroad Industrial Relations Project Oral History Interviews Audiorecordings, Collection Number: 5481 AV
Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Cornell University Library (1973)
4 A tiny crystal, a train, and a little history:
- Wikipedia
- BART.gov
- “BART HISTORY” , as written by Justin Roberts of the Contra Costa Times, compiled anonymously (ca. 1972)
- “Fremont Flyer“
- “We’re Off and Running: BART’s First Decade in Operation 1972 — 1982”
BARTchives - “Automatic Train Control in Rail Rapid Transit”
United States Congress Office of Technology Assessment (May 1976) via Princeton University
5 Perceived, and expressed, attitudes:
- 1979 News Releases, “V-103 BART Labels Concord Shop Takeover an Outrage”; Mike Healy, Public Affairs Director, BART (July 30, 1979)