>CNN has a really scary video of the train crash in Spain recorded by the
>security camera:
Yeee. That thing was cooking through that corner. Kinda glad my
twice-weekly Amtrak trip is a bit slower, (85 MPH / 135 KPH top
speed), although, there are times when we go through a switch a bit
too fast and you get whiplash. (When the stuff comes flying off the
overhead bins, you know they hit it way too fast). And one time, I
know that the car I was in derailed one of the axles for about a
minute until it corrected at a crossing--talk about ROUGH and NOISY--I
was hanging on pretty tight, just in case. It was a bad ride after
that point as there was obviously some damage which they inspected at
each stop after that and kept us from doing the normal speed.
My question surrounds a safety feature I thought these high-speed
trains were required by EU law to have and that's an automatic speed
limiter that kicked in for slower segments to protect against human
error?
> According to the BBC coverage, that curve was rated for a speed of 80km/h,
> and the train was going at about 190km/h, more than twice the speed limit for
> that curve:
That speed rating would have included a healthy dose of safety margin,
but probably not that much safety margin.
The sad thing is that about 1/3 of the passengers have already died.
The number of severe injuries is even greater. There weren't very many
that walked away from it. The perspective is that this was the
equivalent of a plane crash given the speed, passenger count and
velocity termination.
A side-note observation. On Amtrak, all windows can be removed for
egress. Just pull the rubber grommet and yank on a handle. This was
the result of a crash a few years back where the rescuers couldn't
break through the lexan windows and a number of people died. It
doesn't look like this train featured that kind of safety window.
Sad, very sad.
--
Ken Norton
ken@xxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.zone-10.com
--
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