Hospitalized truck driver has no memory of SMART train crash

The driver of the box truck that barreled past rail crossing arms and was struck Thursday by a SMART train outside Santa Rosa has no memory of the crash, investigators said Friday.

Detlev Ihlenfeld, 68, remained in treatment at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, but has not yet been able to provide investigators with any useful information about the crash, said Officer Jon Sloat of the California Highway Patrol.

“Even a slight head injury can affect immediate memory,” Sloat said. “We will check back in a few days to see if it comes back to him.”

Ihlenfeld was driving the furniture delivery truck westbound on Todd Road just after 3 p.m. when for unknown reasons, he drove through the activated, flashing crossing arms and over the tracks just as the train was traveling at high speed through the intersection, according to the CHP.

The northbound train slammed into the left rear of the white box truck, sending it spinning into a power pole, which was sheared in half by the force. The truck was destroyed. Sloat said the train’s estimated speed was at least 50 mph at the time of the crash.

Ihlenfeld appears to own an antique furniture delivery business on Stony Point Road, Sloat said. The CHP provided an incorrect spelling of his name on Thursday.

A bystander said the truck was traveling slowly, perhaps ?10 to 15 mph, in a straight line at a steady speed.

“It was so scary to sit there and witness that,” said Greg Morrow, who said he and a colleague were about 300 feet away and saw the moment of impact. “We were just sitting there in disbelief.”

In the moments before the crash, they wondered whether the driver was asleep or having a medical issue or distracted. They could think of no reason he wouldn’t have seen the down crossing arms or flashing red signals, Morrow said.

The impact jolted and stunned riders, who said they had no warning.

None of the 47 train passengers and three crew members was injured, Sloat said.

Morrow said no horn sounded before the crash.

The president of a company located near the crash site, Morrow said he returned there Friday and noticed a large group of trees on the east side of the tracks near the intersection. He said he didn’t know if the vegetation impaired the engineer’s view of the traffic at the intersection, but thought investigators should consider that possibility.

After the impact, the train stopped about 300 yards down the track, its windshield shattered and its front end a mangled mess, with wood and debris wedged into the body.

Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit Police Chief Jennifer Welch said the agency was still gathering information about the crash, including the train’s speed and other data. Preliminary indications, she said, suggest all the safety equipment in the train and at the intersection were operating properly.

“We’re still running diagnostics and trying to understand exactly what happened,” Welch said.

The SMART investigation of its equipment so far supports the CHP conclusion that the crossing arms were down and operational - with flashing lights and alarms - at the time the driver ran through the intersection, Welch said.

“The gate arm was completed snapped” by the truck, Welch said.

She said she did not have any information about whether the train sounded its horn. The Todd Road intersection, like all the crossings through Santa Rosa, is in a “quiet zone,” which prohibits sounding the train horn unless there’s a safety concern, such as a vehicle on the track.

After the middle and rear cars of the three-car train returned to Rohnert Park to drop off passengers, the two-car train returned north and reconnected with the damaged lead, Welch said.

The damage to that front car was so extensive that engineers didn’t attempt to restart the front engine, instead using the power from the rear car to push the trio north to the agency’s rail yard near at Airport Boulevard.

The agency used buses to ferry passengers between the stations in Rohnert Park and Santa Rosa, around the crash site. Several passengers said that process was poorly managed.

Jo Collins of Santa Rosa said she was appalled to hear her boyfriend’s sons, ages 11 and 14, were forced off the train at Rohnert Park, but there weren’t enough buses to immediately take them north to Santa Rosa.

So the boys, who were on their way from their mother’s home in San Anselmo to their dad’s in Santa Rosa, were left with a bunch of other passengers in the parking lot of the Rohnert Park station.

“I’d call leaving unaccompanied minors alone in a strange city wrong,” Collins said.

SMART spokeswoman Jeanne Belding said the agency had staff members at both stations assisting people with making connections by bus.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 707-521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.