Horrible stuff. I don’t know what to say.
I assume the culprit is cost cutting as usual?
Human error. There was a train stopped in the railway (maybe because it had an issue, still to be cleared). The system knew of this, so it put a red light which was being respected by the other trains to avoid a crash.
The second train, was waiting in a red light but at a certain moment, a human operator told the train driver to ignore the red light and move. The train driver then started the train despite the red light and this is the end result.
Any system in the modern day that relies on one person seeing a light or else 68 people die feels like it has some corners cut somewhere.
He says that around 8:30am this morning, the LZB controlling system failed due to communications issues, leaving no coverage for just over 60km of the track, which in turn triggered an automatic stop for six trains on that stretch.
But around 8:36, the Adif control centre issued a manual instruction to override the warning and let the traffic resume.
He heavily suggests that this “inexplicable” decision should not have been made, as trains should have remained under strict orders not to move.
Just be cautious that the info is from the same minister who apparently*-incorrectly blamed Iryo for the Adamuz crash at first.
*: the report into Adamuz is late & not yet published.
Based on my experience with automated systems that sounds like a situation where the operator has to routinely ignore the red light because it doesn’t work correctly.
Yikes someone didn’t sleep well that night.
Apparently not. The line is equipped with the German LZB system and a similar accident got very close to happening in Germany for reasons that had nothing to do with cost cutting.
Tagging @[email protected] as well.
The usual suspect would be lax security measures due to corruption.
Or another russian-israeli crime to hurt the government
I fucking loathe the Russians and Israelis, but this ain’t that.
Another russian-israeli crime?? what in the fuck kind of mental gymnastics is this? You really think the world is black and white, jedi vs sith don’t ya huh
and of course you’re one of the jedi, right?
Newsflash buttercup, real life ain’t so simple as it is in the movies. You’re maybe too young to remember that Russia directly supported the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, but you should at least be aware of Russia’s current deep alliance with Iran.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A high-speed train slammed into the rear of another train that had stopped, derailing two cars and killing at least 30 people on Wednesday in central Spain, according to local media.
It’s 30 people now.
I can’t imagine how violent that must’ve been. Such heavy objects colliding, causing thirty people (so far) to lose their lives in the event. 🥺
They are sayin 50 now!
What are the odds of two high speed deadly collisions in a single year in a single country? I’m not convinced this is an infrastructure issue, or even a training issue, it could be the result of a cyber attack. I hope they are taking that possibility seriously.
yeah I wouldn’t put it past the fsb one bit to create this chaos
At least the causes were very different. The Adamuz accident took place because of a rail breaking. And it broke in a way that would be difficult to cause using explosives or tools, but rather simply because of not having been checked often enough.
This one was the LZB train protection system’s computers crashing, which caused 8 trains to be stopped by the protection system. The train dispatcher then did not follow the procedure for ordering the trains to return running: They were supposed to drive their first couple of kilometres with a reduced speed, but they were ordered to proceed at full speed. 7 did, 1 stayed still. And then one of the seven moving trains collided at a very high speed with the one that was standing. The LZB computers crashing is apparently a relatively common occurrence, and happens in the home country of the LZB system, Germany, as well. It could have been a “foreign entity” (heh, guess which one), but actually there’s good reason to believe it was a “regular” software mishap. However, what is sure is that the resulting disaster took place because of dispatcher error, and that cannot have been because of any foreign influence.
Low, but not zero. Failures happen, and disaster news gets clicks, so it gets reported on more widely.
Funny enough, I was writing about that yesterday.
Exactly. What’s the point of reporting this outside of Spain, other than generating clicks and engagement? I think it’s irresponsible, makes people wary of travelling by train. Meanwhile more people die on the Spanish roads every 2 weeks (daily in the US).
https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/spain-road-safety.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year
You might really like my post from yesterday.
I really did like it! Thanks for bringing it up, the more people read it, the better.
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This must be hard.
After events like these Anyone who is invested in the private company and not below the poverty line should be held criminally liable for the deaths. The more invested the more liable.
ADIF is not a private company but a state bureau.
Seems more like a systemic fault… There should be sooo many detectors and warning systems in place to make sure this just can’t happen without gross negligence
Those things cost money and don’t directly improve efficiency… So anyone invested in said company was directly or indirectly involved in not having those protections in place so they could get more money.
Those were in place, but the computer systems crashed. That caused all eight affected trains to be stopped by the protection devices you are referring to. The train dispatcher then has to follow a certain procedure to reset the situation, but he did not. He told all 8 to proceed at full speed, although the correct procedure calls for all trains to clear the affected area at a reduced speed, after which the protection system will return to normal use, allowing for full speeds.
Dispatcher is a part of the security system. If what you write was the case, then this was still the security system failing and it seems like because of a design flaw. How can one person just authorize full speed in such situation? Why would it even be possible to run the trains at the full speed with protection devices not working?
But I’ll wait for some proper report…
There was a bad close-call in Finland, where a train drove over a 80 km/h switch at 160 km/h because the driver had forgotten to turn on the train protection device and was expecting to read the speed limit on its screen. The train’s other side actually fully lifted off the rail, but luckily landed back on it instead of the train rolling over. At that point they changed it so that in order to drive full speed without the train protection, the driver has to go through some extra hoops first. There can be situations where that is a useful feature, but it should be made much more difficult than it’s now.
But, as it stands, in almost any train protection system it is assumed that when the system is off-line, railway workers are competent enough to keep things rolling anyway.
The train protection system in question is a German one, BTW. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienzugbeeinflussung
