The article said that a “security system” failed. What does that mean, exactly? What kind of security system failing results in the automatic train control allowing unrestricted speeds?
I suspect lost in translation. “Safety” may be the more accurate word.
And why is a safety system’s fail state allowing unrestricted speeds? Shouldn’t the fail state be the restricted speed?
The fail state is a restricted speed. That restriction is typically 40 km/h or 50 km/h, depending on the country. From that speed you can still stop the train in time if you see an obstacle, and that is completely safe.
But that is mandated by a rule, not by technology. And for some reason the train dispatcher gave an order to continue with normal speed, that is: full speed.
Someone elsewhere posted this quote from the Guardian:
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.
That’s going to weigh heavily on the person who issued that order for the rest of their life. Unless the person is a psychopath.
sounds like a repeat of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago_de_Compostela_derailment
There the accident was caused by illogical placement of different train protection areas. The fast section had a modern high-speed train protection system and where there was a curve, and therefore a slower section, the track was protected by the older Spanish train protection system.
The last piece of information from the high-speed system should of course be “curve ahead, slow down”, but because the crew installing it was looking only at the map of the high-speed section, they failed to notice that where the section ends, there is something immediately beyond. For them it was a straight stretch of railway that then continues “wherever” beyond the “relevant section”.
There was a physical trackside sign warning about the curve, but good luck spotting a trackside sign at a speed of 250 km/h, especially when the in-cab device telling you what speed to drive says “250 km/h until further notice by the in-cab device”.
Of course, where the high-speed section ends and the older section begins, there is a train protection transmission saying “in a couple hundred metres the maximum speed is 80 km/h”, but at point there’s nothing left to do except slow the train down to decrease the magnitude of the disaster.
Its up to 68 deaths now actually. I never had issues with spanish trains, but it seems they are having some major problems recently. If i can immediately remember the last mass casuality train accident off the top of my head then its happening too often. The last one wasnt even a year ago. 46 deaths that time. Like wtf are you doing with your train systems for it to fuck up this badly twice in one year???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_rail_disaster
Apparently bad rail welding and wrongly configured automatic rail fault detection thresholds in that case. For this new one it will take a while to know for sure i guess but it looks like human error during the signalling.
