0 doing this. but it's been a fascinating show. i want to thank everybody tonight for joining me. thank you all my guests and this great studio audience. and have a happy and healthy evening. good night. [ cheers and applause ] tonight breaking news, we may know what sent a train off the tracks and four people to their deaths. the answer may lie with the engineer, not equipment. what it was like in the car paul walker die inned. they thought this was a dead man's hand after two and a half days at the bottom of 90 feet of ocean, why wouldn't it be? it was a man alive after all that time that deep in the water we begin with the breaking news the new york train wreck that took the lives of four dozen and sent many to the hospitals. it came after investigators answered no alcohol involved they said. no sign of break trouble or malfunctioning signals or any mechanical problems that day. ruling all that out only tightened the focus on train enga near william rockefeller and his train going off the tracks 80 mile s an hour on a curve made for 30. that may have been the first inkling of why this happened and there is more tonight. it is breaking news. details from nick robertson who talked to mr. rockefeller's lawyer. >> reporter: the night before the accident mr. rockefeller had good sleep, he went to bed at 8:30 in the evening, woke up at 3:30 in the morning, reported to work after 5:00 in the morning and mr. rockefeller acknowledges he had a temporary loss of concentration just at that vital moment. that is why he's been heard to have said he was in a daze. the ntsb, of course, giving us more details about the investigation today. human error, william billy rockefeller's days increasingly the probable cause. his union representative says he was nodding off and caught himself too late. >> he's extremely distraught over it, and he feels for the families. i don't believe that in my opinion that anybody could ever -- could ever, ever make billy feel worse than he's making himself feel today, so, billy feels terrible. whether it was his fault or not his fault it's his train. >> reporter: having eliminated causes including signal failure, the reason falling upon william rockefeller jr., the enga near. >> they continue interviewing the members of the crew today. >> reporter: in the moments after the detailment rockefeller said going along and i'm in a daze, i don't know what happened. the ntsb say the ten-year veteran driver's houses were routine. he started at 5:00 a.m. in the morning. what time did he start prior to starting the 5:00 a.m. in the morning? >> i don't know the specific time he finished the shift but the day was a typical nine hch hour day and they were routine. >> reporter: so he would have sufficient time to get a full night sleep. >> there is every indication he would have time to get full restorative sleep. >> reporter: they say the engineer is cooperating. >> he's a strong man and it takes a strong man to come down and be honest, and that's what billy is doing. >> reporter: on the question of the brakes, rockefeller claimed they didn't work at the time of the crash. >> we've determined that the metro north mechanical department performed a proper brake test prior to the accident train leaving the station, and there were no alom knees noted. based on this data, there is no indication the brake systems were not functioning properly. >> reporter: the facts, 82 miles per hour on a 30 per mile hour curve, the apart braking came to relsz disturbing. >> the numbers are disturbing. the question is why they were so high. what is known, rockefeller passed a breathalyzer and had not been using his cell phone in the minutes before the crash. his employer says he's innocent before disciplinary hearings are concluded. for now he's out of service, not being paid. >> so nick, i don't understand, just to clarify, the union rep is saying that nodded off, is his lawyer backing that up? >> reporter: his lawyer was backing that up. his lawyer was struggling for the words to describe what happened. this is the first time we heard from the lawyer trying to be definitive on this issue. he described it as a highway hypnosis, zoning out and this is what the union rep was describing. the rep said look, we've all been in that position. we've been driving for that moe men tarry lapse and the central reservation, the crash barrier in the middle of the road. he said we all experienced that. that's what they are getting at, that temporary moment where the concentration is lost. highway hypnosis is a terminology, i think we may hear more about with this, anderson. >> appreciate the update, thanks. joining us is michael bruce, sleep expert. do you buy that idea? there is a difference between highway hypnosis and nodding out. do you buy any of those? >> here is what i'm concerned with, anderson, we went to bed at 8:30 the night before and woke up 3:30. this particular engineer's rhythm, if his biological clock doesn't want him going to bed at a certain time and waking up at a certain time and he's forced to do so because he has to drive the train and he was placed on the schedule a day and a half before he had to commit to this schedule, it could have effects on him. was he zoning out? it was road hypnosis? he probably fell asleep. there is a great likelihood he could have fallen asleep doing this. if his biological clock wanted him to stay up later and he forced himself to sleep, how good of sleep could he have got snn. >> and applying the brakes be a short time before a full stop, that would seem to be more of a nodding out. >> if you're nodding out, it's happening for a second or two. i mean, my understanding is in this particular track, this is a pretty big hair pin turn, it's one thing you know about. this conductor is somebody who knows this turn is coming up. it's a sharp turn coming up. if i'm driving, right, and i know there is a sharp turn coming up, i'm going to perk up. it's coming up, i'm ready. i'm not dozing and nodding off chl i'm becoming more aware, not less aware. if i'm asleep, i can't become more aware. >> also, when i would image on a train track it's easier to get that hypnosis or fall asleep because it's not like you're driving a car, you're on a track. >> exactly. not only are you on a track, which doesn't -- and don't get me wrong, this is not an easy process. >> right, of course. >> engineering a train, this is not just something anybody can do. they are highly trained and use this machinery that not a common individual can do. you're on a track, this is constant noise, motion. think about an airplane. you hear a constant noise, you have a constant motion. how many people are asleep on the airplane when you fly around? a bunch of them. we have an interesting mixture of events. we have a gentleman forced to go to bed at 8:30 at night and wake up at 3:30 in the morning. we don't know his overall sleep schedule two nights before. what if he was going to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 6:30 like a normal person and put him into a situation where his environment is such that it's very sleep inducing. i'm in a closed environment. i got a closed temperature. i've got certain sounds and by the way, the thing i'm steering is on a track and moving at a fair cliff. >> what do you advice for somebody out there who has to work these hours or that may not be their natural rhythm? advice do you have? >> one of the first things we do for anybody that has a tendency to work a shift, stay on that shift, if possible when they are not on those hours. if he has to go to bed at 8:30 and wake up at 3:30 for this to be his shift, those are the hours he should keep when he's off that shift to keep that biological rhythm in the same stance. the other thing is light therapy. believe it or not. being able to have a certain amount of light there commercially available, light boxes you can have and light bulbs that are available that will give you the same sunlight you normally would have when it's dark or during the winter when we know there is a lot of cloud cover. >> that's interest sglg there are a lot of different things >> i saw the temperature in denver today get to 57 at the airport. >> wow. >> the morning low coming up tomorrow morning will be 0. after that, the next morning low will be 6 below 0. we're swinging this 60 or 70 degrees in some spots here and a lot of snow with that. when you have moisture, warm and cold things always break and that's what we're getting now. there is the traffic now from city alert.com, my favorite website in denver. that's not moving fast. snow is coming down. i-70 west of denver, shut down. so many crashes out there. the interstate was done for awhile. they cleared that out. near the eisenhower tunnel things are getting better but i watched pictures on colorado dot and it's completely still snow covered. this is not a piece of cake. all commercial vehicles essentially through colorado have to have chains on the tires at this point. a foot of snow in duluth expected, minneapolis, as well. not quite a foot but close and at least two feet in the mountains to the west of denver. this is a good thing for the people in colorado. they love to go play in the snow. what you don't want to see is highs for tomorrow in the teens or the 30s and then all of a sudden 15, because what will break here, anderson, this isn't on the map. i'll draw it. there is going to be a system that lines up here thursday morning and friday and there's going to be a bunch of snow right through here, probably a foot or more and then somewhere along this line, i don't know where yet because there is still 7 two hours before this happens, a major ice storm will develop at that 32 degree mark that will try to rain, be 31 or 32 and that's not going to work out. >> all right. chad, appreciate the update. let me know what you think. tweet us using hash tag "ac 360." next, grim report card when it comes to the education your kids may be getting here in the united states. when you see how poorly american students do compared to the rest of the world in a new test, you might have tough questions for educators. new details in the "fast and furious crash" the car in question, 600 horses, incredibly quick reflexes and potentially deadly if pushed too far. la's known definitely for its traffic, congestion, for the smog. but there are a lot of people that do ride the bus. and now that the buses are running on natural gas, they don't throw out as much pollution into the air. so i feel good. i feel like i'm doing my part to help out the environment. it's lots of things. all waking up. connecting to the global phenomenon we call the internet of everything. ♪ it's going to be amazing. and exciting. and maybe, most remarkably, not that far away. we're going to wake the world up. and watch, with eyes wide, as it gets to work. cisco. tomorrow starts here. yeah... try new alka seltzer fruit chews. they work fast on heartburn and taste awesome. these are good. told ya! i'm feeling better already. 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