This rage against the system is already having a profound influence on Greece's political landscape. Mr Mitsotakis had been almost certain to call an early election for April, before his term ends in July. The train wreck changed his plans.
Elections will be postponed with a backlash that could cost the centre-right New Democracy party dearly at the ballot box. Its earlier lead over the main opposition party has shrunk, while many fringe and protest parties have gained ground.
The rail disaster has hit the prime minister hard, says Aristides Hatzis, professor of legal theory at the University of Athens, because it damages one of his major selling points. Mr Mitsotakis has always presented himself as a competent manager and liberal technocrat, one to overhaul Greece and lead the country to modernisation.
His government has regularly highlighted its success in modernising some of Greece's creaking public sector operations. But putting the tax system online is understandably overshadowed by voters' realisation that their rail network is a veritable death trap.
For Prof Hatzis, the greatest danger Greece is now facing is in people losing faith in the political system: "Such collapse of legitimacy has historically worked in favour of the extreme right."