Ever feel as though you have no control over things that happen in your life?

Bet that’s how many felt on a December morning in 1892 when fog, ferryboats, and a fainting woman “formed a conspiracy that led to disaster”—as the New York Times put it. The disaster was a New Jersey train collision. Railway workers later spoke of it as “special dispensation from aloft”—what we’d call “an act of God.” But a closer look reveals a lot of human fingerprints.

Acts of God?

Mid-morning December 8 and New York Harbor was blinded by a fog one ferryboat pilot said couldn’t be smashed with a trip hammer. Emerging suddenly from the mist, a freight float scraped the ferryboat Fanwood, costing precious minutes and throwing off its scheduled rendezvous with the ferry Elizabeth.

Elizabeth then was late for its planned 11:30 a.m. departure from New York and its connection with four trains leaving Jersey at precise intervals from 11:41 to 11:44. The trains wound up 11 minutes behind schedule.

As the third train—the High Bridge Express—neared Jersey City’s Greenville station, Mrs. Parsels was trying to board another train when a harried conductor accidentally knocked her down. Desperately clinging to her train so she wouldn’t be crushed by the approaching express, she was rescued by a flagman who rushed her across the tracks in front of High Bridge. Upon reaching the platform, she fainted, attracting a crowd as the first of High Bridge’s four cars rolled through.

Seeing the crowd, High Bridge brakeman A.G. Ubert assumed his engine had struck someone, and following company protocol, pulled the brake. The train’s final car lurched to a stop under the station’s block signal, which automatically threw its red danger sign.

Engineer Wolverton ran to the fourth car, demanding explanation. “Nonsense!” he cried on being told he’d hit someone. Just then the station crowd heard Long Branch Express, only a minute behind High Bridge. They began shouting for the engineer to “Go ahead!”

Wolverton rushed back to his cab and gripped the throttle. The engine pitched forward about 75 feet … without the remaining cars. The couplings had shattered.

With his visibility obscured by the still-thick fog and the pedestrian bridge over the tracks, Long Branch engineer Oscar Durand couldn’t see either the train or the danger signal until he was only two car-lengths away. His 70-ton engine was drawing eight cars. It hit with such forced that High Bridge’s fourth car telescoped into the third. Miraculously, no one aboard Long Branch was hurt and only 11 passengers were injured on High Bridge. Sewer inspector George Lawson was the incident’s lone fatality.

Human failings?

So fog leads to a scrape-up that delays two ferries and four trains. A woman faints, causing a brakeman to stop his train, which is then hit by another—in part because of the fog. Could any of these weather-triggered events have been avoided? Yes, by …

• Planning for contingencies. Weather may be an act of God, but even in 1892, railroad companies knew to expect foggy days that would minimize visibility. And they should have scheduled more than a minute’s margin of error. The same thought occurred to commuters, who began questioning the wisdom of running trains at one-minute intervals. If nothing else, longer intervals would have allowed High Bridge to be evacuated before Long Branch arrived. And if trains hadn’t been pulling into Greenville in such rapid succession, perhaps the conductor wouldn’t have been so harried that he knocked Mrs. Parsels from her train—giving her a shiner, sending her glasses flying, and causing her to nearly be crushed by High Bridge … which prompted her fainting spell.

• Not shortchanging safety. When pressed for time, we all take stupid chances. We leave out important steps, fail to double-check, drive too fast. And the consequences can be deadly. High Bridge had been traveling more than double the maximum allowed speed for approaching a station—possibly trying to make up for weather delays. If High Bridge had been traveling closer to the required 16 mph than 40 mph, perhaps the coupling wouldn’t have collapsed when the brake was pulled and Wolverton would have been able to get his cars out of harm’s way.

• Using common sense.   Railroad rules required trains to stop anytime it appeared a person had been hit. But the rules did not require Ubert to stop directly under the signal. Since he knew another train was fast approaching, it would have been more sensible to pull the brake cord after High Bridge fully cleared the station. In 30 years of service, Long Branch engineer Durand had not suffered a single passenger injury or a dollar’s loss to his employers. Durand had slowed his engine to 20 mph approaching the station. “Had that train run ahead of the signal, even for two car lengths,” he surmised later, “we could have prevented the accident.”

• Seizing the opportunity.   Neither train was carrying a full complement of passengers. And since the cars weren’t crowded, when those at the station began shouting for Wolverton to move, many on board had time to run from their seats and jump to safety before impact. Like his fellow passengers, George Lawson rushed to the platform separating the third and fourth cars. A brakeman screamed for him to “Jump!” But inexplicably, he shook his head and remained riveted as Long Branch drove the car behind him through his perch and a third of the way into the car ahead. Somehow he stayed conscious long enough to tell rescuers his name. But he died without ever explaining why he didn’t seize his chance to outwit fate.