Two Italian commuter trains collided head-on this morning on a single track line. Many fatalities & injuries. God protect them.
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Guess the line did not have some sort of PTC.
Did you see the aerial view of the wreck ?? The passenger cars were destroyed-some of them. Didn't look very crash-worthy.
jim pastorius posted:Did you see the aerial view of the wreck ?? The passenger cars were destroyed-some of them. Didn't look very crash-worthy.
Depends on what their requirements are for "crashworthiness", and the impact speed.
From the news video:
"...unconfirmed reports that an automatic braking system failed ..."
and it happened on a curve that limited visiblity.
Twenty-three people have been killed and dozens hurt in a head-on collision involving two passenger trains in southern Italy, officials say.
The two trains were on a single-track line at the time of the crash, between the coastal towns of Bari and Barletta ... Both were travelling at high speed.
A local prosecutor in nearby Trani said it was too early to speculate on the cause, although human error was likely to have been a factor.
The line, managed by Ferrotramviaria, is used by thousands of people daily on about 200 trains. Work is under way to make it a double-track line.
Attachments
Very sad
I just returned from my first trip to Italy a few weeks ago. We rode their trains quite a bit....and I was actually impressed with them. Some of the nicer trains hit 250 kilometers/hour....or a little over 150 MPH.
This certainly hits close to home. RIP.
Some more information about the causes of the crash. It's easy to blame one person for this, but the system did not have adequate safeguards to prevent one person's mistake from amplifying into a serious accident.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36792246
A station master in southern Italy has admitted he allowed a train to go on a single track, minutes before a deadly collision with an oncoming train.
Twenty-three people died and 52 others were hurt in the head-on crash on a single track between Andria and Corato in the Apulia region on Tuesday.
"I let the train go, I was the one who gave the signal," Andria station master Vito Piccarreta told Italian media.
But he was adamant he was not the only one at fault.
Mr Piccarreta, a railway employee with 24 years of service, was quoted by La Stampa and other newspapers as saying: "I'm not the only one at fault, everyone is blaming me ...
The rail line north of Bari relies on an antiquated phone alert system dating back to the 1960s, in common with some 600km (370 miles) of regional track elsewhere in Italy, the government says. An estimated 2,700km of Italy's rail infrastructure remains single track.
An investigator told La Reppublica newspaper that the problem was not the single track but a control system that had been automated everywhere else. While the number of trains has increased in the Bari area, the system still relies on an outdated reliance on station masters and drivers.
It has emerged that because rail services were late, three trains were travelling in the area at the time of the crash. Mr Piccarreta said he was unaware of the extra train travelling from Corato.
Although the bidding process to update the track and safety systems north of Bari is due to start shortly, millions of euros in EU funding allocated in 2009 to replace single-track lines has gone unspent. The company that runs the line north of Bari, Ferrotramviaria, has blamed Italian bureaucracy for the lack of progress ...
I am surprised the station master was allowed to comment on liability. In any event, it is a tragedy.
They need to make rules more stricked. There are so many crashes in different parts of the worlds. Mainly lack of experience
Evidently some of their control systems leave a lot to be desired. Sort of our Civil War era systems. Same results.
An overview of the July 12 train crash between Andria and Corato, Italy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...rato_train_collision
Essentially, it appears that an outdated control system did not provide adequate safeguards against human error.
These incidents are big news when they happen but we don't always hear the follow-up. They shouldn't be forgotten so quickly IMO.
