来源：《华盛顿邮报》
刊登日期：2021年3月5日
固定搭配：so ... that ...
超纲词：lethal，unnerving，complacency
Where it concerns the safety of the Washington area’s Metrorail system, there have been so many accidents involving fatalities and injuries in recent years — as well as damning reports from the transit system’s outside safety regulator — that even relatively minor warnings are cause for alarm. That’s especially the case when the safety lapse in question has taken place not once or twice, but dozens of times, and recently.
就华盛顿地区的地铁系统安全而言，近年来发生了太多涉及伤亡的事故——地铁系统外部安全监管机构也多次发布谴责报告——所以，即使是相对较小的警告也会引起恐慌。尤其是当安全问题发生了不止一两次，而是几十次，而且是最近发生的时候。
Hence attention should be paid to the warning, issued this week by a top regulator, that Metro ignored its own safety rules governing how power is restored to the tracks after the completion of maintenance work, thereby endangering track workers. The violations occurred repeatedly since the start of this year, according to Sharmila Samarasinghe, chief operating officer at the Washington Metrorail Safety Commission.
因此，值得注意的是，本周最高监管机构发布的警告称，地铁忽视了自己制定的关于维护工作完成后如何恢复轨道电力的安全规定，从而危及轨道工人。华盛顿地铁安全委员会首席运营官莎米拉•萨马拉辛哈表示，自今年年初以来，此类违规事件多次发生。
The commission was established three years ago to provide strong oversight for a transit system plagued by a history of dangerous and lethal incidents and a careless attitude toward safety. Its mission is to spotlight deficits in Metro’s overall culture of safety. It has correctly focused its attention on the system’s Rail Operations Control Center.
地铁安全委员会成立于三年前，旨在为交通系统提供强有力的监督，交通系统历来饱受危险和致命事故的困扰，对安全问题的态度也很粗心。委员会的使命是关注地铁整体安全文化中的缺陷。它将注意力集中在铁路运营控制中心，这是正确的。
The ROCC, as it’s known, functions as the subway’s nerve center; the safety of passengers and workers is largely in its hands. That’s why it was alarming last fall when the safety commission issued a damning report that portrayed the control center’s roughly 100 employees as demoralized, overworked, undertrained and often indifferent to warnings about safety problems and disrepair.
众所周知，铁路运营控制中心是地铁的神经中枢；乘客和工人的安全主要掌握在它手中。正因为如此，去年秋天安全委员会发布了的一份措辞严厉的报告引起恐慌，报告称控制中心的大约100名员工士气低落、劳累过度、训练不足，往往对有关安全问题和年久失修的警告漠不关心。
Metro did not dispute the bulk of the problems laid out in the report, and, to its credit, responded with a blueprint for fixing many of them. Still, it is unsettling that in the past two months the ROCC has routinely ignored safety protocols for restoring power to track segments following maintenance work — specifically, by prematurely instructing workers to restore power on their own, thereby skipping a round of safety checks. “These procedures were violated dozens of times or more at the direction of some managers, creating immediate safety risks,” Ms. Samarasinghe said during the safety commission’s monthly meeting.
对于报告中列出的大部分问题，地铁方面并没有提出异议，值得称赞的是，它还给出了解决其中许多问题的蓝图。然而，令人不安的是，在过去的两个月里，ROCC例行公事地忽视了维护工作后恢复电力的安全规程——特别是过早地指示工人自行恢复电力，从而跳过了一轮安全检查。“在一些管理人员的指示下，这些程序被违反了几十次或更多，直接造成了安全风险，”萨马辛哈在安全委员会的月度会议上说。
The lapses appear to have occurred outside of Metro’s operating hours, meaning passengers were not using the system at the time. The risks were mainly to track workers. The problem is not a new one; the safety commission began calling attention to it in 2019. The fact that it recurs is unnerving.
这些失误似乎发生在地铁运营时间之外，这意味着乘客当时没有使用地铁。安全风险主要由轨道工人承担。这个问题不是一个新问题；安全委员会从2019年开始唤起地铁关注此事。这种问题反复出现令人不安。
Metro has made important progress since 2015, when a fatal smoke incident left a passenger dead at L’Enfant Plaza, after which the current general manager, Paul J. Wiedefeld, took control of the system. That should not, however, be cause for complacency.
2015年，朗方广场站发生致命烟雾事故，导致一名乘客死亡。之后，现任总经理保罗·j·维德菲尔德掌管了地铁系统，自那以来，地铁取得了重要进展。然而，这不能成为自满的理由。