Olympus-OM
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [OM] Train Crash

Subject: Re: [OM] Train Crash
From: Nathan Wajsman <photo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 18:23:16 +0200
A couple of clarifications: the train was not a high-speed (AVE) train. It was 
travelling on AVE tracks (which have a different gauge than standard Spanish 
rail) but it was a new(ish) type of hybrid train that can make use of both sets 
of tracks. It cannot reach the AVE speeds of 300 km/h, only somewhere around 
200 km/h.

Apparently there are two different safety systems, the one used on the AVE 
trains which would have prevented a driver from exceeding the limit to the 
extent it apparently happened here, and an older system which was in use in 
this case and which does not provide the same kind of continuous monitoring. 

One of the Spanish newspapers has found Facebook posts by the driver from last 
year from which it appears that he really liked speed--he posted a picture of 
the speedometer of his train with some comments about how lovely it would be to 
trip a police radar at that speed etc. The posts have now been removed.

The driver survived the accident and has allegedly admitted to police that he 
was going too fast. The black boxes of the train will tell the rest of the 
story, I guess along with blood tests on the driver.

Cheers,
Nathan

Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
http://www.greatpix.eu
PICTURE OF THE WEEK: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws
Blog: http://nathansmusings.wordpress.com/

YNWA









On Jul 25, 2013, at 5:28 PM, Ken Norton wrote:

>> 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
> -- 
> _________________________________________________________________
> Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
> Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
> Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
> 
> 

-- 
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Sponsored by Tako
Impressum | Datenschutz