Underground Crash - Valencia, Spain

[Max]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5141542.stm

At least 35 people have died in an underground train crash in the heart of the eastern Spanish city of Valencia.
Two carriages derailed and crashed in a tunnel near Jesus station, forcing rescuers to evacuate 150 passengers.

Officials quickly ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash. They say high speed and a collapsing train wheel are among the likely causes.

Some 47 other people were injured, with 12 remaining in hospital, in one of Spain's worst accidents of its kind.

Two of those in hospital were reported to be in a "very critical" condition.

Terrible crash

 

[Coxster]

Heard about this on the radio - terrible!

 

[66526]

Struck me when I heard it. I think back to when I was in thier situation 5 years ago. They have got a lot of years of suffering ahead of them, believe me and I wish them the best of luck.

 

[LondonBVE]

I heard it on the news. The news said this "This is the latest news we have received, a underground metro train had a derailement in spain underground. Nobody know what happened. For what they guess it is the driver speeding or something happen to the wheel." The thing about driver speeding is not reported by me, it is what they think. Please do not flame me. I feel really sorry to people who have seriously injured in this train derailment.

 

[LucaZone]

But in the case of that crash in Japan, with the trian jumping the tracks hitting an apartment block. It was the drivers fault for speeding.

However alot of people blamed the tube driver for Chancery Lane? but it turned out to be shoddy track.

Of course its easy to blame the driver, he was the one at the controls of a train that crashed. Its natural logic.....

**update** Infact ive just read a report on the BBC that says speeding was the main cause of this crash. Although they suspect the driver was incapacitated in some way to cause him to overspeed by the amount he did.

 

[Met Driver]

But in the case of that crash in Japan, with the trian jumping the tracks hitting an apartment block. It was the drivers fault for speeding.

That bears no relevance to this particular incident. Each derailment is different, regardless of the root cause.

However alot of people blamed the tube driver for Chancery Lane? but it turned out to be shoddy track.

First of all I don't recall any blame being placed on the driver - the train was operating automatically, so how on earth could it be the driver's fault? Secondly, the derailment was due to a traction motor falling from the train - it had nothing to do with the track. Once again though, I don't see how the Chancery Lane incident is at all relevant to what happened in Valencia.

Of course its easy to blame the driver, he was the one at the controls of a train that crashed. Its natural logic.....

It might be easy to blame the driver, but it is wrong to do so until the full cause of the incident has been announced by those who investigated it.

 

[ChrisCooper]

I think we should wait until we hear more of the official investigation before we start discussing who was to blame. Accidents tend to have many causes, and even if someone seems oviously to blame it might not be the case, or might be a fairly minor factor. It doesn't stop scapegoats being made of them though. Even excess speed can be caused by many factors which are outside of the drivers "blame" (e.g they might have become ill). Admittedly though it is more easy to think of ways where the driver was at fault, and many alternatives to the being at fault are really clutching at straws (e.g some kind of run away). Accidents are usually caused by rare combinations of circumstances though, so nothing can be rules out.
One thing to think about. Many people on both sides of this discussion are very quick to attribute blame to the driver in incidents involving road vehicles on railway lines etc. This is no more right, since again there can be many factors. Afterall, trains, cars, etc, are drivern by humans, and humans make mistakes. Oviously if negligance is found in any case (in particular drink, drugs, excessive tiredness or a disregard for the rules), the book should be thrown at them, although sadly often the worst get off lightly, sometimes ending up no worse than a pure accident. We don't give a good impression of the railway industry if we go by the view that those inside are always right and those outside are always wrong. We just end up at bad as the media, pro-road/anti-rail groups etc.

 

[Techniquest]

I read this yesterday in The Times. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be anywhere near the incident.

Like everyone else, The Times reported 'early indications' blaming the driver. However, they did at least balance that out with eye-witnesses talking about 'how this was going to happen one day' and how the maintenance was next to non-existant. In which case, my finger points immediately at this for the cause. However, I'll remain pretty much neutral until I see any evidence either way. A broken wheel does sound like a maintenance (or lack of) issue though.