UNION IN BWI RAIL ACCIDENT BALKS AT DISCIPLINE PROPOSAL

The union leader who represents the Maryland Mass Transit Administration's
bus and train drivers said yesterday he welcomes negotiations to toughen
the agency's drug-testing and disciplinary policies but vowed to fight any
attempt to fire first-time offenders.

"I think a person is due a second chance," said Ennis Fonder Jr., president
of Local 1300 of the Amalgamated Transit Union.

Fonder also said that every test administered to the driver in the Tuesday
morning crash of a Light Rail train at Baltimore-Washington International
Airport has shown no trace of illegal drugs or alcohol.

"The only thing he was using was a muscle relaxant" for back pain, Fonder
said. He declined to discuss the driver's medical history further.

Twenty-two people were injured when the train plowed through a safety
barrier at its final stop.

It was the second accident in six months; on Feb. 13 a Light Rail train
overran the final stop, also injuring 22. That driver, who was found to be
using cocaine and narcotic painkillers, has been charged with reckless
endangerment. The MTA also fired him.

The driver in Tuesday's accident, Dentis David Thomas, 48, of Baltimore,
told police he blacked out before the crash.

In the wake of the two crashes, MTA Administrator Ronald L. Freeland urged
immediate termination for "extreme safety-sensitive" employees, including
bus and train drivers, found to be using illicit drugs.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the
investigation, said toxicology tests have found no trace of illegal drugs
in Thomas's system.

The safety board wrapped up its on-site investigation yesterday without
finding any mechanical explanation for the crash. Tests on the brakes in
the two-car train's rear car found no problems. The brakes in the lead car
of the two-car train could not be tested because of severe damage.

Keith Holloway, a safety board spokesman, also said federal investigators
so far have been unable to determine the train's speed as it approached the
station because the event recorders failed to pick it up.