"The disaster occurred after years of multiple warnings from the train drivers' official union, while the current government was passing legislation that would make drivers' ability to strike or take industrial action for safety concerns unlawful."
"Three weeks before the crash, the rail workers' union had raised concerns over problems with the administration of the rail network which could put the passengers in danger."
So far it seems that at 8:30 a computer system called LZB was shutdown to some infra issues. Immediately the trains stopped in that line. At 8:36, someone said it was okay to let the trains continue over that rail at full speed as it was "all clear". At 8:53 there was the collision. So far 68 deaths.
No, it has not. Two different events in different places with different causes. Two stochastic events that are not remotely related, but close in time.
Yesterday's accident was a protocol tragedy, someone made a terrible mistake, and sadly those things happen, everywhere. Having two accidents in less than a year is heart breaking, and everyone is feeling that anxiety.
I've taken than train line several times, and will take it again when it's available. Fear of an accident is human and natural when you ride a bus, a train or a plane, but one has to be rational, worldwide transportation is safe.
That's not really fair though. Almost all pedestrians who get hit by cars could have avoided the accident if they were observant and took responsibility for their own safety. People just walk out in front of cars, assuming they will stop, buried in their phone with earplugs in.
I'm not saying it's not the drivers' fault, of course it is and it should continue to be the driver's responsibility to avoid hitting pedestrians. But the roads are full of idiots, scrolling TikTok while driving, driving drunk, high, looking more at their passenger than the road etc. If you routinely put your safety in their hands then you're likely to end up in an accident eventually.
If you take responsibility for your own safety, look both ways before(and during) crossing a road, make sure the driver has seen you and is stopping before walking in front of a car etc then you are almost entirely safe from these kinds of accidents. Very few people get hit by cars without first walking out in front of a moving car.
You can't take responsibility for your own safety in a train. At least not beyond choosing the car you're in.
Tell that to the dozens of families who lost loved ones today! At least 68 people (and still counting) lost their lives. Ambitious, loving, caring human beings, who died completely unnecessarily! No excuse is good enough to justify that.
This type of accident is particularly unacceptable because it's so preventable! I'm not going to speculate on the causes before the official report is out. But a collision between two trains is not that hard to prevent with a train protection system. And if that system (or a component of it) crashes (or malfunctions in a fail-safe way), but operations should still continue, then there need to be safe fallback protocols in place that everyone is trained to follow.
One such rule might be, for instance, that following an electronic interlocking failure causing axle counter sections to be reset, meaning track vacancy cannot be proven, track sections must be swept by trains that may only run on sight at ~40km/h max.
"Someone made a mistake" is never an acceptable excuse. That's what we had to learn in aviation a long time ago. Nobody goes to work wanting to cause a fatal accident. The train dispatcher(s), driver(s), and whoever else might have been involved in this, (most likely) did not intend to cause this. But it is almost always a combination of bad procedures, normalization of deviance, lack of safety culture, bad training, lack of regulatory oversight, and of course inadequate technical equipment and safety systems, that together lead to fatal accidents.
Accidents like this one are fully preventable, there's no excuse, but that doesn't mean we should blame a particular person. Instead, it is the entire system, which is supposed to have multiple redundant layers of safety, that failed us. Investigators are going to come up with many recommendations to prevent similar accidents in the future. Let's hope (and make our voices heard) that these recommendations actually get implemented as well.
Every protocol has corner cases, we have seen it world wide several times. It's frustrating to accept it because yesterday's accident was just a one word mistake from an operator, and my first reaction is also yours, it's unacceptable. But sadly and rationally, it can happen. As always has been, let's hope this leads to better protocols.
Then lets crash 10x more trains, it will still be safer than cars. The point is not to be safer than cars, the point is to not die while taking my daily commute in a form of transportation I have no control over whatsoever. Especially if its easy to mitigate like in the case of trains.
The relative safety of various transportation modes varies a bit by country. In the USA at least, commercial airliners and buses are marginally safer than trains. (All of those are much safer than passenger cars.)
Normal publications rarely publish good news. At most, news are often neutral, but mostly bad. One has to go out of their way to read actual good news.
My feeling is there is a serious psychological manipulation campaign going on against the west and allies via social media.
Go look at Youtube on a story about UK helping Ukraine and look at all the comments saying, "Putin is not our enemy", "Russia is better than our own government, the UK is a failure".
1. I see the same from people in some non-western (or western allied) countries too.
2. I do not see many comments like that (although i do not look at youtube comments, i do see comments on these on social media) and have never seen any saying Russia is better than the UK!
3. The feeling of failure in the UK goes back to long before the Ukraine war - it has been developing over many decades.
My view is the west had a golden age after winning the cold war and cannot cope with the loss of its global dominance since. This has also had bad effects for some countries outside the west (not necessarily western allied) and there have been other political shifts around the world too.
I also think the way the news operates, and the rise of social media and mobile phones, lockdowns during the pandemic, have a lot to do with it.
> Go look at Youtube on a story about UK helping Ukraine and look at all the comments saying, "Putin is not our enemy"
Is even worse. See: Operation Doppelgänger [1]
The fact is that last week a wave of fridges operating under old software were attacked in France, apparently using LLM to abuse vulnerabilities; and this week one of the last high-speed routes still operating under the old security system crashed at every level. The "postmortem" of this failure will be very interesting to read.
Ah but the good news thing is actually nothing to do with Spain and everything to do with news in this era. It’s a problem everywhere that news is like 95% bad, and not because the world is getting any worse either.
As far as I can tell, the idea that rail is the safest form of transit is just false. At least looking at recent Europe-wide data, and even if you make the _very_ favorable decision to include only occupant fatalities, modern commercial aviation has meaningfully lower fatalities per passenger-km than modern rail.
Aviation is generally used for longer journeys, and most of its risk is in the take-off / landing (so per-trip instead of per-mile). I wonder what happens if you compare fatalities-per-passenger-trip (or per-passenger-mile) on typical-length trips where aviation and HSR are competitive?
As someone from the US I have repeatedly heard that Spain's economy is doing reasonably well. And I just looked it up, unemployment is approximately the lowest it has been in two decades. Considering the post 2009 era of economic turmoil that Spain went through, that economic momentum seems like a real positive.
In June Goldman Sachs put out an article noting how well Spain's economy is doing, which included this employment comparison (showing Spain's outperformance versus its peers):
The jobs being created are tending more toward high value, high productivity jobs that pay better than average. That's no doubt helping diversify Spain's economy further away from tourism, which should provide greater long-term economic strength and stability. Overall it might be a really good decade coming up for the people of Spain.
I would also add how greatly improved living in Spain has been. The change in last 15 years is dramatic. Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga even Madrid are top of the list of best liveable cities. I am not sure how (probably local politics) but almost no other cities in europe managed to become so great.
Some days ago I actually traveled on these high speed trains to Madrid (the same route Madrid - Seville). I paid extra to be able to select a middle car seat because of similar disaster that happened in Spain only in January this year:
Cab-signalling train protection systems like LZB (and more modern alternatives like ETCS) are generally considered to be sufficient to ensure safe separation. The interlocking only allows setting a route if all its sections are detected vacant, conflicting routes are locked out, and flanks are protected. Meanwhile, the train protection system prevents trains from exceeding their movement authority. These systems can even largely monitor themselves and are designed to be fail-safe (often by putting all signals on danger and letting the operators figure it out).
But in those cases where the system does crash and reset, how can operations be started again? That's where you need well-specified fallback procedures. One such procedure might be that, in case axle counter sections to lose their counts (because of a crash of the interlocking or the axle count evaluator), causing affected sections to show as disturbed and mandating a manual reset, each section must be swept by a train running on sight (under a caution order in LZB or OS mode in ETCS).
So you detect them miles away. It's a real-time analysis problem: assign a latency equal to the longest time required to react and that's the time you have to detect an oncoming train.
Because rail is quite non line of sight and quite infrastructure defined pathing.
The automatic coordination system hit a fail condition; they neglected the fallback protocols that had rules for spacing determined to work reliably without the computer keeping real time supervision; they crashed.
This is in the way more like the Washington D.C. helicopter plane mid-air where some normalization of deviance got people to ignore automated protection systems.
If most involved had known the fallback protocols they would have refused to move/continue while the protocols were utterly neglected. At least with a robust safety culture active, ofc.
> This is in the way more like the Washington D.C. helicopter plane mid-air where some normalization of deviance got people to ignore automated protection systems.
I think that's not quite accurate. Yes, there was a normalization of deviance. But it wasn't primarily that automated protection systems were ignored.
First, the systems on board both aircraft could not have saved them. TCAS resolution advisories are inhibited below 900ft AGL and aural traffic advisories are inhibited below 400ft AGL. The aircraft collided below that altitude. The system wasn't ignored, it just doesn't do much at low altitude. The RJ crew got a TA about 20s prior to the crash, but that's not something that would normally require evasive action (they're trained to act immediately on an RA, not a TA). They were set up for landing. It's hard to find any fault with them.
The RJ wasn't equipped with ADS-B In, and the helo's ADS-B Out was misconfigured since installation. ADS-B In could have alerted both crews almost a minute prior to impact. But it wasn't available.
Second, if you're referring to the tower: Yes, the controller did get an automated conflict alert, but he did not ignore it. He asked PAT-25 whether they had the RJ in sight and told them to pass behind it. This response wasn't good enough, but that's mainly attributed to the controller's high workload and time pressure leading to omissions.
A proper traffic advisory should have included azimuth, distance, direction of travel, and type and altitude of the conflicting aircraft, e.g.:
PAT-25, traffic ten o'clock, one mile, north-west bound, a CRJ descending through four hundred, circling approach to runway 33.
A proper safety alert should also include an action to resolve the situation, e.g.:
Traffic alert, PAT-25, traffic ten o'clock, one mile, a CRJ on final for runway 33. Advise you [descend/turn] immediately.
Either one might have prevented the accident. But when ATC gets busy, the reality of those calls often looks quite different than how they're described in a textbook. Combining local and helicopter control with 12 aircraft on frequency is just too much. Of course, that leads to routine conflict alerts (5 separate events in the 18 minutes leading up to the crash). Sure, nuisance alerts lead to desensitization (and the report discusses that), but here the workload seems to have been the bigger underlying factor.
Of course, this is far from the only contributing factor. The normalization of deviance that the NTSB actually found are that visual separation had become the primary way of separating helicopters from aircraft, helicopter crews reporting "in sight" when they hadn't positively identified the traffic yet, the tower trying to "make it work" rather than forcibly slowing operations down, etc.
That in addition to putting a helicopter route as little as 75ft below the approach path, the helicopter's altimeter being 100ft off (within spec!), the helicopter crew's use of night vision gogggles severely limiting field of view, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft being on separate frequencies severely limiting the RJ crew's SA.
And perhaps most egregiously, the FAA ignoring the countless warning signs (15 thousand close proximity events over 3 years, are you kidding me?) Failing to fix the helo route, failing to reduce arrival rate (the request from Potomac TRACON wasn't forwarded due to being "too political"), failing to improve the tower's conflict alert software...
People did not ignore automation, the regulators ignored lots of growing holes in the slices of Swiss cheese.
When LZB drops out, does the fallback to ASFA plus verbal authorization actually enforce block separation, or is it basically just driver discipline at 300 km/h?
When on verbal authorization, controller discipline is probably more important than driver discipline. And I really hope they don't do that at 300 km/h.
With a car, you should always drive at a speed so you can stop in the distance you can see and predict as the driver. With a train, you can’t really do that if you don’t want to go walking speed around every bend in the track. So a high speed train is always operating in a state where it needs external sources to tell it if the way is clear.
I always thought there is a system of rail signals which should prevent accidents like this always in place, like dividing railroad into sections, turn on red light if the next section is occupied, yellow before that and so on...
Did it fail somehow which lead to this accident? I think such systems must be redundant enough to survive even without power/computers?
- A fault in the signaling system caused an Iryo and a Renfe train to stop -- the Iryo train was in front.
- For some reason, the control center authorized the Renfe train to proceed at full speed, despite the cab signaling showing it should stop. It then hit the Iryo train that was stopped in front of it.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the main issues that caused this are likely:
- Poor / improper maintenance causes the primary signaling/communication system to frequently fail. The standard "correct" behavior in this case is to manually authorize stopped trains to proceed slowly (at approx 10 mph so they can stop if they see another train) to the next station and wait for the system to be restored.
- Since the system was frequently failing and proceeding at slow speeds causes severe operational slowdowns, the control center started allowing them to proceed at linespeed instead, possibly with some ad-hoc checks to make sure the track was clear.
- That got normalized, and whatever ad-hoc checks (if any) they were doing failed in this case.
> - Since the system was frequently failing and proceeding at slow speeds causes severe operational slowdowns, the control center started allowing them to proceed at linespeed instead, possibly with some ad-hoc checks to make sure the track was clear.
- That got normalized, and whatever ad-hoc checks (if any) they were doing failed in this case.
This is a 200km/h line, which is right at the limit of the speed where you don't need in-cabin signaling (plenty of lines in France run at 200km/h without it), which explains why a careless control center operator could end up in this spot.
East Asia: top-tier infrastructure, well maintained
Europe: second-best-tier infrastructure, rapidly decaying and overwhelmed
USA: Third World-equivalent infrastructure
The United States actually possesses one of the most efficient, profitable, and advanced freight rail networks in the world with 140,000 miles of well maintained rail. Being optimized for freight the rails are designed for slower moving heavy cars instead of lighter fast moving passenger cars.
Giant chunks of it lack basic safety features like crossing gates; there are 4.6 derailments per day; it is considered normal to have trains slow down to near walking pace due to poor track maintenance; electrification is a rounding error; trains routinely sit idling in sidings for huge chunks of the day; railroads are unable to comply with the legally-mandated requirement to let on-time scheduled passenger trains have priority; and high-speed rail basically doesn't exist despite several corridors being the perfect scenario for it.
By any metric except $/ton/mile, US rail is a giant failure. The only reason it still exists is because the US got screwed over by geography and can't make use of waterways for over half the country. Want to ship grain out of Montana, or coal out of Wyoming? You have to use a train, no other option.
"racing cars" actually would not be stationary. "Race cars" are the class of vehicle, which can be stationary. If the cars are racing, they are not stationary.
"High-speed" is ambiguous. It can be used to describe the class of vehicle, or it can be used to describe the state of motion of the vehicle.
> El Mundo is reporting that the Iryo train flagged a failure in its LZB signalling system 10 minutes before the crash, but the train behind did not receive the information due to a potential human error.
> Investigators believe the AVE high-speed train travelling behind crashed into the stationary Iryo service.
> A human error by an [state-owned railway infrastructure company] Adif operator in response to a malfunction in the main signaling system is the likely cause of the accident, government sources said. This safety system is automated, but when it fails, it switches to manual mode. That is why the trains came to a stop when the automatic safety system failed, and service resumed under human control - and that is where the error occurred, according to initial analyses.
Some further points:
- Apparently some of the drivers involved were in training
- Infra maintenance is abysmal. Budgets are poor and or misspent
- Second time this happens, in 9 months
PS. They knew or should have known that the AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) train was ordered (manually) to continue forward, when it should not have. There was at least one known train blocking the track. The LZB system had failed - as reported by drivers systemwide. The Control Center at Atocha station decided for trains to move forward. According to the Transportation Minister this is inexplicable - even further, trains did not follow protocols beyond this: They are supposed to engage in "marcha a la vista" (very very slow, cautious, line-of-sight only traversal to the nearest destination) when in any doubt. This was not ordered, but "normal" further travel.-
Witnesses report, riders that use that same line every day, that trains were also frequently stopped yesterday - reasons unknown. But there were warning signs.-
64 Km. were affected by a "computer failure" at 08:30 local. 08:36, the "decision" was taken from Atocha to continue operations. 25 Km. later, the crash takes place.-
I was in Spain a year ago and it felt like the high speed trains weren't running as smoothly as they were when I was last there a decade earlier. At the time I chalked it up to false memories and not to judge based on vibes, but I guess my spidey senses were accurate. It also felt like a contradiction as there was a decent amount of expansion construction that I saw.
Post-crash investigation is much worse than with plane crashes, and also measures taken. We had an accident in 2013 (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidente_ferroviario_de_Santi...), 80 death. "Investigation" was only to decide who goes to jail, and surprise the driver goes, with another guy from Renfe Safety department. It was also decided to change the ERTMS, with 60m € budget. AFAIK, still uninstalled.
If that was a plane crash, rarely pilots are to take all the blame and even if they are the main cause, the recommendations would be to add more training, more off time, redundant measures to help the pilot or overcome their mistakes and they usually do deep investigations that end in plane redesign / retrofit, changes in routes, adding safety equipment, etc. It never goes "human error", and close the report.
With the current news this was not a manteinance issue (that might be a problem anyway), but a failure in "control tower" that put two planes in the same runway, with one of them stopped in the middle. It is beyond logic how two trains can be in the same railway closer than X distance, even with human allowing it, instead of having a TCAS-like system.
Maintenance is not sexy for anyone; there was an article posted earlier with "advice for junior engineers" that had the top advice "(1) Pick business impact over backlog". Maintenance is backlog.
A catastrophe is, to use a tired analogy, the tip of the iceberg. The larger truth is that the Spanish rail system, along with most if not all European rail systems, is collapsing due to excess demand and underinvestment. Any random train ride in Europe at any time in the past few years has been an exercise in patience. Delays, cancellations, and other incidents are constant. A tragedy like this happens on top of a big pile of decay
Well actually. Trains are designed now to not have "telescoping" crashes. If you think the trains being sturdy doesn't lead to a reduction in loss of life in these collisions.. Well it could be much, much worse.
I'm not familiar with all the safety features in design now, but there are quite a few. I wouldn't be surprised if they are designed to deflect and derail during collision now.
That's also a possible factor in why those sitting in the rear half of the plane during a crash are more likely to survive - they have the front of the plane as the crumple zone.
Although for trains, it looks like the middle might be the safest (in case of a rear-end collision).
There are all kinds of isolated systems that trigger warnings but the thing that seems to be missing everywhere is a centralized simulation with all the data in it. Or perhaps a series of simulations each slightly further in the future. If any variable changes run it again until it reaches its time stamp.
For example, it shouldn't be possible in 2026 for a vehicle to get stuck on the crossing (with cameras) without the train driver getting a notification. You can even power down an entire track if it's obstructed. You might not want self driving, self breaking seems quite desirable.
Depending on where, there can be lots and lots of small crossings. The cameras themselves might not be that expensive, but keeping them in working order is very nontrivial.
The accidents/deaths in Europe have been dropping over the years.
But I think the main difference is that while trains are extremely popular in Japan, in Europe it's been for decades under attack from governments who push roads and driving instead. This leads to underfunding and hollowing out of the train services.
Classic example seen all around Europe is partial privatization where it's often some state owned company that manages the expensive rails maintenance and unprofitable (but required) train lines while private companies get the profitable lines. This often leads to public opinion that trains are subsidized too much which leads to more decline of the services.
Another complication is that Japan is one country with one system where everybody speaks same language but trains in EU have to connect different systems together and it is hard to come to unified systems and laws around trains.
This route is the last of the Spanish high speed lines that still has an older train protection system. There has been a similar accident in 2002 in Germany where LZB was also used: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienf%C3%B6rmige_Zugbeeinflu... . Now after 24 years you might think they had mitigating procedures in place...
The railroads in the USA were trying to push back and delay improvements to automated safety systems until the 2015 Amtrak 188 crash https://youtu.be/-mzaavmtT9M
Only was finally fully rolled out in I think 2020 5 years after the accident.
Delaying/avoiding spending money on safety seems to be common around the world.
In Oslo, Norway, we have train signaling errors all the time it feels like. It leads to a lot of delays and things. But I think that when these systems are not working, it is better to slow down everything even going as far as to put some trains on hold for some time, to avoid human errors in manual instruction and routing leading to crashes and deaths.
"Signalfeil" (signal error) does not actually always mean that there is an error with the signaling! Happened to read up on this while stuck on a train due to signal error!
It is means that they have gotten a signal that there is an error somewhere, which might be the signaling system, but also loads of other things! [1]
The term is super confusing thought, should probably have been "error signal" instead
What this chart doesn't show you is how much more expensive it is to advance the grade of automation. Systems like the Docklands Railway are only safe because all their tracks are grade separated with exclusive track. They still need a person on board to be sure that nobody is stuck in the doors or wedged between the train and platform before the train starts moving.
"Have computers control everything" is four words to say, but it's millions or billions more in money, and adds years to the projects. London's Crossrail, for example, was years late due to the complexity of switching between 4 separate signalling systems (ETCS on the Heathrow branch, AWS on the GWML, TPWS on the GEML, and CBTC in their tunnel and exclusive track.)
We're still using TPWS on the ECML, for example, because:
> TPWS was developed by British Rail and its successor Railtrack, following a determination in 1994 that British Rail's Automatic Train Protection system was not economical – ATP would cost £600 million (equivalent to £1.2 billion in 2024) to implement, compared to value in lives saved: £3 – £4 million (£6 – 8 million in 2024), per life saved, which was estimated to be 2.9 per year.
TPWS is where a little light comes on saying it would be a good idea to brake now because you passed a signal at danger. Only very fancy versions of TPWS will actually apply the brakes for you.
> Both crashes would have been prevented by an operational automatic train protection (ATP) system, wider fitting of which had been rejected on cost grounds. The crash severely damaged public confidence in the management and regulation of safety of Britain's privatised railway system.
But even then, an inquiry asked to look specifically into ATP determined we were right to reject it, it was just Too. Fucking. Expensive.
> Since both the Paddington and Southall crashes had reopened public debate on ATP, a separate joint inquiry considering the issue in the light of both crashes was also held in 2000; it confirmed the rejection of ATP and the mandatory adoption of a cheaper and less effective system, but noted a mismatch between public opinion and cost-benefit analysis.
> "Have computers control everything" is four words to say, but it's millions or billions more in money, and adds years to the projects.
The delays, the reduced amount of infrastructure built, and passing on of those costs in ticket prices causes people to use other forms of transport that are less safe thereby causing more casualties than a slightly less safe rail system would.
> They still need a person on board to be sure that nobody is stuck in the doors or wedged between the train and platform before the train starts moving.
Why do they need someone?
Skytain in Vancouver is fully automated and driverless with no attendant on board. Grade separated, doors automatically close, and there are sensors that trigger if someone enters the guideway.
That's a "nobody's dead yet" scenario. Safety standards require full platform doors at all stations for attendant-free operation, i.e. the platform has wall-to-ceiling barriers, the train arrives perfectly aligned (which means zero variation in train configuration, which rules out almost all mainline stations that accept different operators services), and the platform doors open and close in sync with the train doors.
Anything less is begging to get someone wedged in there as the train drives off, even if it's just a limb or a trailing bag strap.
> In June 2023, the operator of the Vancouver SkyTrain, TransLink announced a feasibility study into installing platform screen doors on the Expo and Millennium lines. Such installation was previously deemed infeasible, due to SkyTrain's diverse fleet and different door positions. However, with the acquisition of the Alstom Mark V trains, which will replace the ageing Mark I, the door positions allow for a feasibility study to proceed.
EDIT: I found some SkyTrain stats for you. 2016-2025, 1 fatal train-passenger interaction on the platform, 36 fatal in the guideway. Most were intentional suicide attempts.
I am aware, iirc the rate doubled after covid with most being self harm which is why the platform door discussion has started again. Primarily to prevent suicides and the resulting system shutdowns as the number of unintentional major injuries or deaths has been pretty low over its 40 years of no drivers or attendants and being the 4th busiest in canada/usa. The two new lines currently under construction right now will also not have platform doors.
So despite being fully automated is comparable with most other major metros/train systems that have a driver/attendant with the only metro's performing significantly better being the ones with platform doors - hence my comment of asking "why is an attendant needed for automation?" when it doesn't significantly improve safety in the same way doors would.
in the end we still may not end up with platform doors even thou the study can proceed now as the cost will be astronomical and always with safety systems there might not be the appetite for it.
As Skytrain has no attendants, there's a certain level of risk of passenger injury and death no matter how good the sensors are. If Skytrain had platform doors, there would likely be less, but probably never zero, and TransLink baulk at the cost (for now).
Other systems, e.g. the Docklands Light Railway, which has attendants that can also drive if needed, are OK with paying those attendants (for now). I presume they've done a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it's cheaper to keep paying humans to ensure every train departs safely, and to operate the manual controls if the automation fails, than it is to upgrade the system to the point that doesn't require them and is also considered safe.
Skytrain is from the 1990s. However elevators have been fully automated since before I can remember (1960s is my guess, but that is a guess if you care to look it up I'll stand corrected)
As long as vision zero is considered more of a gross infringement on personal freedums than a laudable goal, making trains as safe as they are uniquely fit to become is not exactly a great way to allocate funds to maximize impact. Trains are already very safe. Even where they currently lack 4 layers of fail-safe systems operated at a level where that still permits reliable&punctual service. The same money on making them shine could be spent on improving car infrastructure (or even removing some car infrastructure!) for greater expected harm reduction.
"In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's."
That's patently false, as Spain has the largest High-speed rail network in the world after China and it has seen constant expansion for the last 30 years.
Maintenance and expansion are two different things. Governments of the day tend to favour big announcements for shiny new things, while simultaneously deferring maintenance whenever they can to redirect money to various other priorities.
I think you have to talk about how this is measured. Their network is huge, but frequencies are low and the maintenance costs per KM of track are very high relative to ridership. If you just think about the metric of KM of high-speed track, it's true, Spain has a larger network than, for example, Japan. But Japan is sending high-speed trains down some of its lines every 3 and a half minutes! Nothing remotely like that is happening in Spain.
EU statistics say that per km traveled there are 28x more deaths when traveling by car then by train. With trains you basically don't get passenger deaths except those which end up in media. Also in the train related deaths almost everything are not passengers but people on tracks or level crossing users.
The incompetence in the world that is likely the underlying cause for this, is a serious cancer that is ruining our society. We need to speak out even against what seems like lesser issues, because we normalize that behaviour until it perverts everything.
How do you even speak to the ineffable idea of 'incompetence'? How do you remediate it? More draconian, individualized worker surveillance?
This feeds into the idea that the problem with safety these days are lazy workers, not the fact that companies are increasingly extending work hours beyond what's reasonable, firing keystone employees and shoveling more work onto the remaining individuals, and operating with a general disregard of regulatory safety guidelines around training and rest.
> On rolling stock, the union wants lasting technical fixes for reliability. It further calls for correct application of breaks in driving time under article 36 of Royal Decree 929/2020 and an end to the block on early-retirement reduction coefficients under Royal Decree 2621/1986. Two further demands concern a May 7 agreement on hiring new entrants as trainee drivers and a 1990 agreement on support for drivers involved in incidents where a person is hit by a train.
>On new drivers, Renfe called the claim that recruits are being kept on training scholarships false. It said none of the 402 drivers who have joined are on a scholarship.
Yes. Modern levels of reliability and safety don't come from workers trying harder or caring more, it requires systems, procedures, controls, redundancy, fail-safes.
Incompetence and laziness are very different things. You can have very hard working, engaged, active people that are still incompetent for the job they are supposed to do.
> This feeds into the idea that the problem with safety these days are lazy workers, not the fact that companies are increasingly extending work hours beyond what's reasonable, firing keystone employees and shoveling more work onto the remaining individuals, and operating with a general disregard of regulatory safety guidelines around training and rest.
It's both. The nihilism (see France riots for ex) and general incompetence that many of us see in the workplace or in our dealings with, for example, government agencies, and in our dealings with others is obviously there too and needs to be rooted out.
How do you deal with incompetence? In Europe I have no idea because of labor laws. In America we should probably be aggressively firing bad workers and grifters, and at the same time increasing wages and benefits and providing for items like safety and proper rest for those who actually want to show up and get things done.
Well people in Spain have a lot less working hours than in other European countries such as Greece, Poland, and Malta. Whether work hours means doing actual work or just loafing around is harder to measure.
From your own link, of all the EU nation states Spain is pretty much middle-of-the-pack for per-worker hours.
Another counterpoint: higher work hour countries have higher rates of death per kilometer of active track [0]
Greece (highest in the EU for work hours) = 22.3 rail deaths per 1k kilometer of track followed by Portugal (another high work hour ranking) with 6.2, Portugal (about 200 more hours than Spain annual) at 6.2, and Hungary (at about 100 more hours) at 5.8.
The only two countries with less deaths per 1K KM of track and more work hours are Ireland and Estonia. All the rest (Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Slovenia, Luxembourg) have less annual work hours than Spain.
Once upon a time I did root cause analysis professionally, and a trainer told us if you attributed the root cause to people without finding malice you were just being lazy. At the very least I doubt anyone to blame here was actually involved in the accident, but someone who decided it was not in the budget to put an automated system in place faster.
They had an automated system, it had failed earlier in the day in that section causing trains to be signalled to stop. Then they had a manual go-slow human backup protocol which appears to also have not been observed - some drivers were given clearance to continue as normal. Swiss cheese of compounded failures, with tragic results.
> And what are the systemic practices in place that led to people not following the official protocol?
I guess we'll find out. Apparently one of two drivers who were given the go ahead for normal operations requested additional confirmation because he or she (rightly) thought go-slow was the expected response for transit resumption under the fallback protocol. Some incompetence in the control authority Adif, then, but I'm sure that'll be the focus of the inquiry they will no doubt have.
I'm so fucking tired of you people constantly trying to reduce human accountability after accidents like this that claim lives. It's always the fault of the system and never the fault of any people. As if we are all just cogs in a machine that is controlled by no-one. It is your fatalistic worldview that is directly causing accidents like this. How many more people have to die before we can fix things? Just stop.
Obviously individual people can be at fault, but it is this further process of asking _why_ individual people fail—pointing to systems, procedures, cultures—that has (in part) contributed to the extraordinary safety of aviation.
So I would say on the contrary, it is that systems worldview that actually leads to lasting improvements. Because human nature is not changing in a hurry.
i personally think that incompetence is actually the norm. that such things like trains even exist, imo is very much due to extraordinary people being incentivized to do extraordinary things. trains are extraordinary to me. this is not to diminish your sentiment in any way.
in fact, i think your sentiment is fundamentally the same that drives extraordinary people to do extraordinary things! it's a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are, and when it's coupled with resources, support, etc., that's when impressive things happen!
this also means that i don't think it helps much to shame people broadly or politicize the matter.
Who wants to design a basic cryptographic p2p lock between trains that limit their speed 30km/h if they're not able to get proof they're alone on a track; when the alternative is to debate endlessly about whom to blame, and which billion-dollar conglomerate has the technical prowess to sit on the committee to debate the specs for a much worse system.
no clear cause has yet been named. it can be many things and ultimately they will always blame human error because it gives away the least information about what really happened.
malfuncitoning equipment. humans, geopolitical agendas against europe... there can be a lot of things going on here.
dont jump to conclusions and be skeptical of what people shout.
The only way to achieve higher levels of competence is to enforce higher levels of accountability. Over the last couple of years Spain has suffered major infrastructural catastrophes without any leadership being held accountable at all. It’s not unreasonable to consider jail time or even capital punishment for such gross negligence.
> It’s not unreasonable to consider jail time or even capital punishment for such gross negligence.
It is entirely unreasonable to consider capital punishment.
* an eye for an eye solves nothing - it doesn't bring dead people back to life, it just results in another person killed
* it's not an effective deterrent, it won't change how people act more than the risk of jail-time will
* it's unethical. It sounds like 'justice' if your idea of justice is simple retribution, but it completely undermines the concept of redemption - it advocates treating people as unfixable and unable to atone for their 'sins' and instead of limiting the pain and suffering - it spreads pain to more people
* no system is perfectly and inevitable you will end up punishing somebody with death based on faulty / flawed evidence that only later comes to light as being flawed/faulty. You can't bring a dead person back to life and say "sorry we got it wrong"
* finally - and perhaps most critically - tragedies such as these are almost the result of failures across an entire system with 10s, 100s, sometimes 1000s of people each culpable to varying degrees with many 'sliding doors' moments where such a tragedy could have been avoided had a different decision been taken. Sure you can always simplify things and point to the symbolic figurehead and say they are ultimately accountable and should take the ultimate responsibility for the group's failure (bonus points if in doing so you highlight how well paid they are to take on such a responsibility). But what you'll arrive at isn't justice and higher standards - instead you'll just have another dead person, killed in cold blood and the generic hope that somehow that additional death will act as a stronger driver of change than the already very real deaths that occurred in the tragedy itself.
You lost me at that part. It is entirely unreasonable to consider that in the vast majority of the world, where state-sanctioned killing of citizens has been abolished.
> Gross negligence is a lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. Gross negligence is a heightened degree of negligence representing an extreme departure from the ordinary standard of care. Falling between intent to do wrongful harm and ordinary negligence, gross negligence is defined as willful, wanton, and reckless conduct affecting the life or property or another.
The history was a little more complex than that. The trains were not too wide, they were the right legal size where ordered.
The problem is while the trains were being built, the laws changed, requiring now extra space between trains and tunnels to evacuate people.
The only solution would be to dump all the trains and start from scratch in a new design for narrower trains that still keep the same comfort and safety levels. This is not realistic.
If you order a car that has legally given the green light to be built in 2026, the government can't say in 2027 that your car must had measured 1m less. Would be unfair for buyer and maker. Unless the government can show a very solid reason, they must accept the car model for the expected years of car life. This is why we still can drive legally cars with no airbags, and with toy seat belts. Cars that no way would be accepted to be built today.
Who ordered the trains was doing everything right, the problem was created by who changed the specifications in the middle of the process.
its not only in spain where this type of issues have been on the uptick. people not getting jailed can be indicative also of the whole story not being told.
At this moment, may be incompetence, but I wouldn't discard still a sabotage that go out of hand.
A computer system failed, stopping 6 trains, we don't know why. The proprietary automatic brake system of Siemens was working fine for 30 years, but it was too old, maybe too expensive and being replaced by a different system (non proprietary?). This shouldn't had caused any problem, as stopping the trains when a problem happens in the railway is the by-default security protocol.
Somebody then ordered the trains to keep moving, even if there was still a train stopped. We still don't know why this person didn't saw that light in the screen, or why in the age of mobile phones and internet, he/she was unable to warn about the second train.
And a Spanish train that should be moving slowly after such events by protocols, was moving at 150-200 Km/h near a train station before to crash into the Italian train, in a perfectly sunny day. It does not make any sense and, seemly, it goes directly against the security protocol.
We don't know still if the machinist tried to stop the train and the brake system failed, or didn't even tried to stop the train (maybe suffered a dismay or a heart attack?). Survivors say that they didn't noticed a decrease of speed before the impact. Black boxes will clear that in the next weeks.
For foreign journalists, to paint Spain as a third world country is practically a sport, and they love to write the word 'siesta' for some strange fetish, but the reality is that this is one of the most modern high-speed train systems in the planet, and worked like a charm for more than 30 years until now.
And this must be taken in a whole context of hybrid war, including strange delays and strange train accidents all around Europe in the last two or three years (Poland, France, etc). We can safely assume that hybrid war will be more vicious the more desperate are the Russians, and this another added source of chaos happened suspiciously close to the November Spanish elections with plenty of strikes and riots that happened to occur overnight.
Taking the whole context, the probability of all of that happening by chance at the same time before the elections, is basically zero.
> And a Spanish train that should be moving slowly after such events
Update. A second security system should had stopped the train automatically in the next red semaphore (or reduced the velocity to 40Km/h) without machinist intervention. That system was down also. And control had 17 minutes to warn the incoming train and to talk directly with the Italian train, but they apparently failed to do it.
So at least there are two different automatized computer security systems that failed on a row, plus a control center that acted in a strange way, plus a machinist that may, or may not, had tried to pull the brakes and she is missing.
And now they are saying that a former minister of employment was traveling in that train and she is also missing.
And wouldn't be the first also that "Russians messing with elections" meant exactly: Russians messing with elections.
If you have a better explanation by all what is happening in Europe just right now, with perfectly coordinated teams of people seeding chaos and unrest, I will hear it with maximum interest.
And yes, I know that Trump is not exactly a friend of anything latino related unless he can take advantage of it, and is specially unfriendly with the Spanish president.
My bet is that all of this will suddenly stop after Russia collapses by the self-destruction of their economy triggered by a chain of Putin's unhinged decisions
I was just listening to the EconTalk podcast, and the guest was a Spanish demographer that specifically said that Spanish train system was being starved for funding in the past 10 years or so. This is because the population is aging, and all of the growth in the economy is being directed towards pensions and health care for the rapidly growing number of retirees.
Ayn Rand gets a lot of hate from the philosophy world, and Atlas Shrugged is definitely not a good novel by any means, but you have to give her credit for basically predicting where we are now from way back in the 50's.
I can understand a lot of the dislike of that novel, but her description of how the United States slowly falls apart due to culturally-reinforced incompetence is worth appreciating.
I was incredulous, I wondered what sort of LoC does book rankings like it's Buzzfeed, I thought "Maybe it's the LoC after a Trump-infestation or DOGE", but (1):
> In 1991 the Book of the Month Club and Library of Congress asked readers to name the most influential book in their lives: Atlas Shrugged came in second only to the Bible.
The fact that you equate a survey result (who knows who heard of the survey, or if there was a campaign to skew the results) to the LoC giving it a rating, and "that's why I read it", and you think this is a good rebuttal, reveals to me a lot about you.
Regardless of how that one survey was done AS ends up on many best US fiction book lists. The 90s may have also been one of the AS peaks, as I recall being told to read from multiple people (family and teachers). From your own link:
The novel made the New York Public Library’s list of Best Books of the Century in 1996, and Radcliffe Publishing ranked it 92 out of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. In 1999, Atlas Shrugged was number 37 in the list of 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians. A Harris poll placed Atlas Shrugged on America’s Top 10 Favorite Book List in 2008, and The Modern Library ranked it the number one best novel published in the English language in 2009. The novel is listed as number six on Boston Library’s list of 100 Most Influential Books of the Century, and it ranks number five on the list of the 20 Most Inspirational Books ever written. Atlas Shrugged has been translated into 14 languages, including Chinese (2007).
From a story perspective, I found AS too long and preferred The Fountainhead. Were they influential to my younger self? Sure, much like the Bible was to me as an atheist. A story with both good and bad ideas to draw from.
From what I can remember (of reading the book 25 years ago), it predicted an increasing suspicion and resentment of excellence and competence, coinciding with a rise in socialist sentiments. The net result is that various aspects of society would begin to break down as the total amount of competence in the culture vanishes.
I think she attributed too much of the symptoms merely to socialism; obviously the world is more complex than that. But we've got this train crash, the ongoing issues with Boeing airplanes, several multi-billion dollar public infrastructure projects across America that have stalled and will likely never be completed (like the California high speed rail system), the list goes on.
To me it seems the opposite is happening: the push for higher profits by the Capitalists is overriding the competence of rank and file, resulting in these disasters. And all these profits just shoring up wealth that is accruing unequally to those same Capitalists is what is inciting socialist sentiments.
To me Ayn Rand's writings always seemed like an Economics Horror story: effective at instilling dread in its readers, but of some highly unrealistic boogeyman.
When I said that the world is more complex than that, I meant that she oversimplified it. To say that the opposite has happened is also an oversimplification.
It's a more correct oversimplification than the other one though ;-)
Like I'd be really curious to see evidence of people saying, either directly or indirectly, that "we should be suspicious of competence and excellence."
On the other hand, you already mentioned concrete evidence of money-seeking causing disasters: Boeing.
Right, we don't know about this one, but typically there are some corners being cut somewhere or some other money motive lurking in the background, like the Boeing one OP mentioned.
Won’t speak for the poster, but in my experience the incompetence of the average person is only exceeded by the incompetence of the ownership class. The people Ayn Rand lauded are usually the largest obstacle to actually Getting Shit Done.
Competence in what, is the question. Obviously they are competent in making money. The biggest scammers are also competent in making money too, though.
Look at the current US President, for instance. He is richer than any of us will ever be, but what exactly is his competence?
For a moment there my first tought was that "autonation" might be something like the concept of a nation made by the individual itself or something like that.
We need to create a word for typos/autocomplete errors that have a positive result like this on the reader.
Automation of a bad process or security measure is not a way out of the incompetence of people who designed it. Automation of garbage only brings more garbage.
A simple solution would be for all trains to have self recoding GPS which they probably all have and log their location on an internet map plus marking all the switches and allow open viewing to public and passengers to monitor their own train versus others. Ai can also be used to set the alarm.
The GPS location as well as track ID gets logged every few sec. They probably already have the info. Its not rocket science; that is how their systems probably work. They probably log the ID of previous and incoming switch too. They probably have all of this, just make it public.
This is just 2.5 years after the same thing happened in Greece, killing 57:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash
No not exactly an "accident".This is just 9 months after another catastrophic railway accident in Spain. In Adamuz, january 18th of this year 2026. 46 confirmed dead.
Yes, same government. 0 resignations, 0 political consequences, 0 apologies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_rail_disaster
Say it with me: social murder is fully legal and looked up on by society.
Its. Just. Good. Business.
https://elpais.com/espana/2026-10-28/ultima-hora-del-choque-...
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/28/spain-high-speed-train-crash...
https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2026/10/28/toledo-tr...
https://www.reuters.com/live/spain-train-crash-live-deaths-i...
So far it seems that at 8:30 a computer system called LZB was shutdown to some infra issues. Immediately the trains stopped in that line. At 8:36, someone said it was okay to let the trains continue over that rail at full speed as it was "all clear". At 8:53 there was the collision. So far 68 deaths.
LZB is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienzugbeeinflussung
It's become a real risk to take a train in Spain. Two severe accidents in the same year on what's typically considered the safest transport method.
I can't remember the last time I read good news related to my country.
No, it has not. Two different events in different places with different causes. Two stochastic events that are not remotely related, but close in time.
Yesterday's accident was a protocol tragedy, someone made a terrible mistake, and sadly those things happen, everywhere. Having two accidents in less than a year is heart breaking, and everyone is feeling that anxiety.
I've taken than train line several times, and will take it again when it's available. Fear of an accident is human and natural when you ride a bus, a train or a plane, but one has to be rational, worldwide transportation is safe.
There were 222 pedestrian urban-area deaths in Spain in 2025.
There is a risk of just being outside. Usually due to cars.
That's not really fair though. Almost all pedestrians who get hit by cars could have avoided the accident if they were observant and took responsibility for their own safety. People just walk out in front of cars, assuming they will stop, buried in their phone with earplugs in.
I'm not saying it's not the drivers' fault, of course it is and it should continue to be the driver's responsibility to avoid hitting pedestrians. But the roads are full of idiots, scrolling TikTok while driving, driving drunk, high, looking more at their passenger than the road etc. If you routinely put your safety in their hands then you're likely to end up in an accident eventually.
If you take responsibility for your own safety, look both ways before(and during) crossing a road, make sure the driver has seen you and is stopping before walking in front of a car etc then you are almost entirely safe from these kinds of accidents. Very few people get hit by cars without first walking out in front of a moving car.
You can't take responsibility for your own safety in a train. At least not beyond choosing the car you're in.
You’re making these claims and providing zero data to back them up
The claim that most people hit by cars were in the street?
Doing anything is a risk. The salient thing is relative risk. Even with record levels of train accidents it’s still the safest way to travel.
The bodycount sits around 100 this year for trains and 1775 last year for cars.
Even correcting for distance travelled it’s still way more safe.
Tell that to the dozens of families who lost loved ones today! At least 68 people (and still counting) lost their lives. Ambitious, loving, caring human beings, who died completely unnecessarily! No excuse is good enough to justify that.
This type of accident is particularly unacceptable because it's so preventable! I'm not going to speculate on the causes before the official report is out. But a collision between two trains is not that hard to prevent with a train protection system. And if that system (or a component of it) crashes (or malfunctions in a fail-safe way), but operations should still continue, then there need to be safe fallback protocols in place that everyone is trained to follow.
One such rule might be, for instance, that following an electronic interlocking failure causing axle counter sections to be reset, meaning track vacancy cannot be proven, track sections must be swept by trains that may only run on sight at ~40km/h max.
"Someone made a mistake" is never an acceptable excuse. That's what we had to learn in aviation a long time ago. Nobody goes to work wanting to cause a fatal accident. The train dispatcher(s), driver(s), and whoever else might have been involved in this, (most likely) did not intend to cause this. But it is almost always a combination of bad procedures, normalization of deviance, lack of safety culture, bad training, lack of regulatory oversight, and of course inadequate technical equipment and safety systems, that together lead to fatal accidents.
Accidents like this one are fully preventable, there's no excuse, but that doesn't mean we should blame a particular person. Instead, it is the entire system, which is supposed to have multiple redundant layers of safety, that failed us. Investigators are going to come up with many recommendations to prevent similar accidents in the future. Let's hope (and make our voices heard) that these recommendations actually get implemented as well.
Every protocol has corner cases, we have seen it world wide several times. It's frustrating to accept it because yesterday's accident was just a one word mistake from an operator, and my first reaction is also yours, it's unacceptable. But sadly and rationally, it can happen. As always has been, let's hope this leads to better protocols.
Then lets crash 10x more trains, it will still be safer than cars. The point is not to be safer than cars, the point is to not die while taking my daily commute in a form of transportation I have no control over whatsoever. Especially if its easy to mitigate like in the case of trains.
Per capita ?
its still probably the safest form of transport.
> I can't remember the last time I read good news related to my country.
I hear comments like this from people from many countries.
The relative safety of various transportation modes varies a bit by country. In the USA at least, commercial airliners and buses are marginally safer than trains. (All of those are much safer than passenger cars.)
https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/ipsavage/436.pdf
Normal publications rarely publish good news. At most, news are often neutral, but mostly bad. One has to go out of their way to read actual good news.
My feeling is there is a serious psychological manipulation campaign going on against the west and allies via social media.
Go look at Youtube on a story about UK helping Ukraine and look at all the comments saying, "Putin is not our enemy", "Russia is better than our own government, the UK is a failure".
It's not healthy.
I do not think this is it, for several reasons:
1. I see the same from people in some non-western (or western allied) countries too. 2. I do not see many comments like that (although i do not look at youtube comments, i do see comments on these on social media) and have never seen any saying Russia is better than the UK! 3. The feeling of failure in the UK goes back to long before the Ukraine war - it has been developing over many decades.
My view is the west had a golden age after winning the cold war and cannot cope with the loss of its global dominance since. This has also had bad effects for some countries outside the west (not necessarily western allied) and there have been other political shifts around the world too.
I also think the way the news operates, and the rise of social media and mobile phones, lockdowns during the pandemic, have a lot to do with it.
> Go look at Youtube on a story about UK helping Ukraine and look at all the comments saying, "Putin is not our enemy"
Is even worse. See: Operation Doppelgänger [1]
The fact is that last week a wave of fridges operating under old software were attacked in France, apparently using LLM to abuse vulnerabilities; and this week one of the last high-speed routes still operating under the old security system crashed at every level. The "postmortem" of this failure will be very interesting to read.
[1] https://www.disinfo.eu/doppelganger-hub/
Spain actually boasts about their train system quite a lot. That's why more attention on related news
Ah but the good news thing is actually nothing to do with Spain and everything to do with news in this era. It’s a problem everywhere that news is like 95% bad, and not because the world is getting any worse either.
As far as I can tell, the idea that rail is the safest form of transit is just false. At least looking at recent Europe-wide data, and even if you make the _very_ favorable decision to include only occupant fatalities, modern commercial aviation has meaningfully lower fatalities per passenger-km than modern rail.
Aviation is generally used for longer journeys, and most of its risk is in the take-off / landing (so per-trip instead of per-mile). I wonder what happens if you compare fatalities-per-passenger-trip (or per-passenger-mile) on typical-length trips where aviation and HSR are competitive?
Also trains seem safer because even in a collision like this many survived.
Most airplane crashes lose all souls.
Safest for passengers, it seems so. Safest for everybody else? Who knows?
As someone from the US I have repeatedly heard that Spain's economy is doing reasonably well. And I just looked it up, unemployment is approximately the lowest it has been in two decades. Considering the post 2009 era of economic turmoil that Spain went through, that economic momentum seems like a real positive.
In June Goldman Sachs put out an article noting how well Spain's economy is doing, which included this employment comparison (showing Spain's outperformance versus its peers):
https://imgur.com/QqB74I6
Spain's unemployment rate has converged with Finland's, a remarkable improvement:
https://imgur.com/1cp6mL4
The jobs being created are tending more toward high value, high productivity jobs that pay better than average. That's no doubt helping diversify Spain's economy further away from tourism, which should provide greater long-term economic strength and stability. Overall it might be a really good decade coming up for the people of Spain.
I would also add how greatly improved living in Spain has been. The change in last 15 years is dramatic. Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga even Madrid are top of the list of best liveable cities. I am not sure how (probably local politics) but almost no other cities in europe managed to become so great.
Some days ago I actually traveled on these high speed trains to Madrid (the same route Madrid - Seville). I paid extra to be able to select a middle car seat because of similar disaster that happened in Spain only in January this year:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_rail_disaster
Does that technically save you or only mitigate around the hardest-to-be-hit
How come we have collision avoidance mandated and working in 3 and 2 dimensions (TCAS, AEB), but somehow do not have it in 1-dimensional motion?
Cab-signalling train protection systems like LZB (and more modern alternatives like ETCS) are generally considered to be sufficient to ensure safe separation. The interlocking only allows setting a route if all its sections are detected vacant, conflicting routes are locked out, and flanks are protected. Meanwhile, the train protection system prevents trains from exceeding their movement authority. These systems can even largely monitor themselves and are designed to be fail-safe (often by putting all signals on danger and letting the operators figure it out).
But in those cases where the system does crash and reset, how can operations be started again? That's where you need well-specified fallback procedures. One such procedure might be that, in case axle counter sections to lose their counts (because of a crash of the interlocking or the axle count evaluator), causing affected sections to show as disturbed and mandating a manual reset, each section must be swept by a train running on sight (under a caution order in LZB or OS mode in ETCS).
at 30-40km/h, which is where the train controller really messed up there.
This is exactly the thought I always have.
It seems impossible to imagine that there are any layers of defense in depth involved here… Because it should be so easy to avoid.
There's not a sensor that can detect another train with enough warning to matter. Stopping takes miles, and turning isn't an option.
So you detect them miles away. It's a real-time analysis problem: assign a latency equal to the longest time required to react and that's the time you have to detect an oncoming train.
GPS...?
Because rail is quite non line of sight and quite infrastructure defined pathing.
The automatic coordination system hit a fail condition; they neglected the fallback protocols that had rules for spacing determined to work reliably without the computer keeping real time supervision; they crashed.
This is in the way more like the Washington D.C. helicopter plane mid-air where some normalization of deviance got people to ignore automated protection systems.
If most involved had known the fallback protocols they would have refused to move/continue while the protocols were utterly neglected. At least with a robust safety culture active, ofc.
> This is in the way more like the Washington D.C. helicopter plane mid-air where some normalization of deviance got people to ignore automated protection systems.
I think that's not quite accurate. Yes, there was a normalization of deviance. But it wasn't primarily that automated protection systems were ignored.
First, the systems on board both aircraft could not have saved them. TCAS resolution advisories are inhibited below 900ft AGL and aural traffic advisories are inhibited below 400ft AGL. The aircraft collided below that altitude. The system wasn't ignored, it just doesn't do much at low altitude. The RJ crew got a TA about 20s prior to the crash, but that's not something that would normally require evasive action (they're trained to act immediately on an RA, not a TA). They were set up for landing. It's hard to find any fault with them.
The RJ wasn't equipped with ADS-B In, and the helo's ADS-B Out was misconfigured since installation. ADS-B In could have alerted both crews almost a minute prior to impact. But it wasn't available.
Second, if you're referring to the tower: Yes, the controller did get an automated conflict alert, but he did not ignore it. He asked PAT-25 whether they had the RJ in sight and told them to pass behind it. This response wasn't good enough, but that's mainly attributed to the controller's high workload and time pressure leading to omissions.
A proper traffic advisory should have included azimuth, distance, direction of travel, and type and altitude of the conflicting aircraft, e.g.:
PAT-25, traffic ten o'clock, one mile, north-west bound, a CRJ descending through four hundred, circling approach to runway 33.
A proper safety alert should also include an action to resolve the situation, e.g.:
Traffic alert, PAT-25, traffic ten o'clock, one mile, a CRJ on final for runway 33. Advise you [descend/turn] immediately.
Either one might have prevented the accident. But when ATC gets busy, the reality of those calls often looks quite different than how they're described in a textbook. Combining local and helicopter control with 12 aircraft on frequency is just too much. Of course, that leads to routine conflict alerts (5 separate events in the 18 minutes leading up to the crash). Sure, nuisance alerts lead to desensitization (and the report discusses that), but here the workload seems to have been the bigger underlying factor.
Of course, this is far from the only contributing factor. The normalization of deviance that the NTSB actually found are that visual separation had become the primary way of separating helicopters from aircraft, helicopter crews reporting "in sight" when they hadn't positively identified the traffic yet, the tower trying to "make it work" rather than forcibly slowing operations down, etc.
That in addition to putting a helicopter route as little as 75ft below the approach path, the helicopter's altimeter being 100ft off (within spec!), the helicopter crew's use of night vision gogggles severely limiting field of view, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft being on separate frequencies severely limiting the RJ crew's SA.
And perhaps most egregiously, the FAA ignoring the countless warning signs (15 thousand close proximity events over 3 years, are you kidding me?) Failing to fix the helo route, failing to reduce arrival rate (the request from Potomac TRACON wasn't forwarded due to being "too political"), failing to improve the tower's conflict alert software... People did not ignore automation, the regulators ignored lots of growing holes in the slices of Swiss cheese.
Already posted 3 hours ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271032
When LZB drops out, does the fallback to ASFA plus verbal authorization actually enforce block separation, or is it basically just driver discipline at 300 km/h?
When on verbal authorization, controller discipline is probably more important than driver discipline. And I really hope they don't do that at 300 km/h.
How is it that Waymo can safely operate a car on public streets but accidents like this are still possible?
With a car, you should always drive at a speed so you can stop in the distance you can see and predict as the driver. With a train, you can’t really do that if you don’t want to go walking speed around every bend in the track. So a high speed train is always operating in a state where it needs external sources to tell it if the way is clear.
Perhaps part of the answer is liability.
I always thought there is a system of rail signals which should prevent accidents like this always in place, like dividing railroad into sections, turn on red light if the next section is occupied, yellow before that and so on...
Did it fail somehow which lead to this accident? I think such systems must be redundant enough to survive even without power/computers?
Better article:
https://inews.co.uk/news/39-dead-two-high-speed-trains-colli...
- A fault in the signaling system caused an Iryo and a Renfe train to stop -- the Iryo train was in front.
- For some reason, the control center authorized the Renfe train to proceed at full speed, despite the cab signaling showing it should stop. It then hit the Iryo train that was stopped in front of it.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like the main issues that caused this are likely:
- Poor / improper maintenance causes the primary signaling/communication system to frequently fail. The standard "correct" behavior in this case is to manually authorize stopped trains to proceed slowly (at approx 10 mph so they can stop if they see another train) to the next station and wait for the system to be restored.
- Since the system was frequently failing and proceeding at slow speeds causes severe operational slowdowns, the control center started allowing them to proceed at linespeed instead, possibly with some ad-hoc checks to make sure the track was clear.
- That got normalized, and whatever ad-hoc checks (if any) they were doing failed in this case.
> - Since the system was frequently failing and proceeding at slow speeds causes severe operational slowdowns, the control center started allowing them to proceed at linespeed instead, possibly with some ad-hoc checks to make sure the track was clear. - That got normalized, and whatever ad-hoc checks (if any) they were doing failed in this case.
This is a 200km/h line, which is right at the limit of the speed where you don't need in-cabin signaling (plenty of lines in France run at 200km/h without it), which explains why a careless control center operator could end up in this spot.
Damn, I wonder if "control center" is just a bunch of software, not very reliable then!
No, that's the operations headquarters, staffed by people.
East Asia: top-tier infrastructure, well maintained Europe: second-best-tier infrastructure, rapidly decaying and overwhelmed USA: Third World-equivalent infrastructure
The United States actually possesses one of the most efficient, profitable, and advanced freight rail networks in the world with 140,000 miles of well maintained rail. Being optimized for freight the rails are designed for slower moving heavy cars instead of lighter fast moving passenger cars.
US rail is an embarrassment.
Giant chunks of it lack basic safety features like crossing gates; there are 4.6 derailments per day; it is considered normal to have trains slow down to near walking pace due to poor track maintenance; electrification is a rounding error; trains routinely sit idling in sidings for huge chunks of the day; railroads are unable to comply with the legally-mandated requirement to let on-time scheduled passenger trains have priority; and high-speed rail basically doesn't exist despite several corridors being the perfect scenario for it.
By any metric except $/ton/mile, US rail is a giant failure. The only reason it still exists is because the US got screwed over by geography and can't make use of waterways for over half the country. Want to ship grain out of Montana, or coal out of Wyoming? You have to use a train, no other option.
Please provide citations.
A high-speed train collided with a stationary train. The title is misleading.
Both are high-speed trains regardless of whether they are in motion or not.
High-speed is a descriptor of the type of train, not their current speed.
Just like a racing cars is still such even when stationary.
"racing cars" actually would not be stationary. "Race cars" are the class of vehicle, which can be stationary. If the cars are racing, they are not stationary.
"High-speed" is ambiguous. It can be used to describe the class of vehicle, or it can be used to describe the state of motion of the vehicle.
Race cars are called racing cars in UK English, and maybe other places in the Anglosphere.
Yes, same in US English: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racing%20car
Am American, grew up as a NASCAR fan, I’ve never heard someone say “racing cars” as a noun
> El Mundo is reporting that the Iryo train flagged a failure in its LZB signalling system 10 minutes before the crash, but the train behind did not receive the information due to a potential human error.
> Investigators believe the AVE high-speed train travelling behind crashed into the stationary Iryo service.
> A human error by an [state-owned railway infrastructure company] Adif operator in response to a malfunction in the main signaling system is the likely cause of the accident, government sources said. This safety system is automated, but when it fails, it switches to manual mode. That is why the trains came to a stop when the automatic safety system failed, and service resumed under human control - and that is where the error occurred, according to initial analyses.
https://www.elmundo.es/economia/2026/10/28/6ae1c9a1e9cf4a372...
Some further points: - Apparently some of the drivers involved were in training - Infra maintenance is abysmal. Budgets are poor and or misspent - Second time this happens, in 9 months
PS. They knew or should have known that the AVE (Alta Velocidad Española) train was ordered (manually) to continue forward, when it should not have. There was at least one known train blocking the track. The LZB system had failed - as reported by drivers systemwide. The Control Center at Atocha station decided for trains to move forward. According to the Transportation Minister this is inexplicable - even further, trains did not follow protocols beyond this: They are supposed to engage in "marcha a la vista" (very very slow, cautious, line-of-sight only traversal to the nearest destination) when in any doubt. This was not ordered, but "normal" further travel.-
Witnesses report, riders that use that same line every day, that trains were also frequently stopped yesterday - reasons unknown. But there were warning signs.-
64 Km. were affected by a "computer failure" at 08:30 local. 08:36, the "decision" was taken from Atocha to continue operations. 25 Km. later, the crash takes place.-
550 souls involved. 68 fatalties. 90 wounded, 50 severe.-
I was in Spain a year ago and it felt like the high speed trains weren't running as smoothly as they were when I was last there a decade earlier. At the time I chalked it up to false memories and not to judge based on vibes, but I guess my spidey senses were accurate. It also felt like a contradiction as there was a decent amount of expansion construction that I saw.
Alas, maintenance isn't sexy for governments.
Post-crash investigation is much worse than with plane crashes, and also measures taken. We had an accident in 2013 (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidente_ferroviario_de_Santi...), 80 death. "Investigation" was only to decide who goes to jail, and surprise the driver goes, with another guy from Renfe Safety department. It was also decided to change the ERTMS, with 60m € budget. AFAIK, still uninstalled.
If that was a plane crash, rarely pilots are to take all the blame and even if they are the main cause, the recommendations would be to add more training, more off time, redundant measures to help the pilot or overcome their mistakes and they usually do deep investigations that end in plane redesign / retrofit, changes in routes, adding safety equipment, etc. It never goes "human error", and close the report.
With the current news this was not a manteinance issue (that might be a problem anyway), but a failure in "control tower" that put two planes in the same runway, with one of them stopped in the middle. It is beyond logic how two trains can be in the same railway closer than X distance, even with human allowing it, instead of having a TCAS-like system.
Maintenance is not sexy for anyone; there was an article posted earlier with "advice for junior engineers" that had the top advice "(1) Pick business impact over backlog". Maintenance is backlog.
It's incredible the apparent level of incompetence displayed.
A catastrophe is, to use a tired analogy, the tip of the iceberg. The larger truth is that the Spanish rail system, along with most if not all European rail systems, is collapsing due to excess demand and underinvestment. Any random train ride in Europe at any time in the past few years has been an exercise in patience. Delays, cancellations, and other incidents are constant. A tragedy like this happens on top of a big pile of decay
10 deaths at last count. Amazing it's not 100% dead.
64 already. Those trains are quite long and sturdy. But there will be lots of severely wounded.
The trains being sturdy doesn't help much. The (de)acceleration alone is enough to kill, as is smashing against the seat in front of you.
Well actually. Trains are designed now to not have "telescoping" crashes. If you think the trains being sturdy doesn't lead to a reduction in loss of life in these collisions.. Well it could be much, much worse.
I'm not familiar with all the safety features in design now, but there are quite a few. I wouldn't be surprised if they are designed to deflect and derail during collision now.
That's also a possible factor in why those sitting in the rear half of the plane during a crash are more likely to survive - they have the front of the plane as the crumple zone.
Although for trains, it looks like the middle might be the safest (in case of a rear-end collision).
There are all kinds of isolated systems that trigger warnings but the thing that seems to be missing everywhere is a centralized simulation with all the data in it. Or perhaps a series of simulations each slightly further in the future. If any variable changes run it again until it reaches its time stamp.
For example, it shouldn't be possible in 2026 for a vehicle to get stuck on the crossing (with cameras) without the train driver getting a notification. You can even power down an entire track if it's obstructed. You might not want self driving, self breaking seems quite desirable.
Depending on where, there can be lots and lots of small crossings. The cameras themselves might not be that expensive, but keeping them in working order is very nontrivial.
Just pay for it? Look, the camera here works just fine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsuyLs_0C0I
If you can prevent just one of those (and if we ignore injury, trauma and death) it should cover expenses for quite some time.
Why are high speed trains often crashing in Europe??
You rarely hear of such in Japan.
More precisely, there have been zero passenger deaths due to crashes or derailments on Japan's bullet train network since its inception in 1964.
The accidents/deaths in Europe have been dropping over the years. But I think the main difference is that while trains are extremely popular in Japan, in Europe it's been for decades under attack from governments who push roads and driving instead. This leads to underfunding and hollowing out of the train services.
Classic example seen all around Europe is partial privatization where it's often some state owned company that manages the expensive rails maintenance and unprofitable (but required) train lines while private companies get the profitable lines. This often leads to public opinion that trains are subsidized too much which leads to more decline of the services.
Another complication is that Japan is one country with one system where everybody speaks same language but trains in EU have to connect different systems together and it is hard to come to unified systems and laws around trains.
Japan is a good example of train privatization done right:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_and_privatization_of_...
This is a very unfortunate event,
On another topic, I shall reconsider using bus over train for my trips.
How is this even possible in this day and age. It can be all automated, double and quad checked enroute ..
This route is the last of the Spanish high speed lines that still has an older train protection system. There has been a similar accident in 2002 in Germany where LZB was also used: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienf%C3%B6rmige_Zugbeeinflu... . Now after 24 years you might think they had mitigating procedures in place...
The railroads in the USA were trying to push back and delay improvements to automated safety systems until the 2015 Amtrak 188 crash https://youtu.be/-mzaavmtT9M
Only was finally fully rolled out in I think 2020 5 years after the accident.
Delaying/avoiding spending money on safety seems to be common around the world.
2006 subway accident in Valencia had a similar context, they used the FAP system, cheaper than ATP, which would have prevented the accident.
It's the second time this year too. In Spain. Same company.
apparently even the same line
It’s the main line, and Toledo is near Madrid.
Spectacular place. Look up pictures. It’s like a fairytale.
It's been reported that the automated system had failed, so trains were being routed and instructed manually.
In Oslo, Norway, we have train signaling errors all the time it feels like. It leads to a lot of delays and things. But I think that when these systems are not working, it is better to slow down everything even going as far as to put some trains on hold for some time, to avoid human errors in manual instruction and routing leading to crashes and deaths.
"Signalfeil" (signal error) does not actually always mean that there is an error with the signaling! Happened to read up on this while stuck on a train due to signal error!
It is means that they have gotten a signal that there is an error somewhere, which might be the signaling system, but also loads of other things! [1]
The term is super confusing thought, should probably have been "error signal" instead
[1] https://www.banenor.no/nyheter-og-aktuelt/bane-nor-forklarer...
Oh interesting, TIL :) Thanks!
But then you increase the risk of (suspected) sabotage disrupting the Dutch railway network. Which obviously is better than an deadly accident, but...
Isn't speed under verbal authorization limited to like 30-40 km/h?
This was my immediate thought -- this is such a tragic unforced error. It seems impossible for this to happen.
"In this day and age" means nothing when so many of these train systems are running on technology from the mid-1900s.
Spain didn't even have high-speed trains until the early 1990s so I don't think that's the case here.
The network started construction in the late 1980s so that's still 40 years ago. The 90s weren't as recent as we all think..
Still recent enough to have computers fully able to control everything.
The word "computers" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
I would think that the software is the weakest link in the chain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation
What this chart doesn't show you is how much more expensive it is to advance the grade of automation. Systems like the Docklands Railway are only safe because all their tracks are grade separated with exclusive track. They still need a person on board to be sure that nobody is stuck in the doors or wedged between the train and platform before the train starts moving.
"Have computers control everything" is four words to say, but it's millions or billions more in money, and adds years to the projects. London's Crossrail, for example, was years late due to the complexity of switching between 4 separate signalling systems (ETCS on the Heathrow branch, AWS on the GWML, TPWS on the GEML, and CBTC in their tunnel and exclusive track.)
We're still using TPWS on the ECML, for example, because:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_Protection_&_Warning_Sys...
> TPWS was developed by British Rail and its successor Railtrack, following a determination in 1994 that British Rail's Automatic Train Protection system was not economical – ATP would cost £600 million (equivalent to £1.2 billion in 2024) to implement, compared to value in lives saved: £3 – £4 million (£6 – 8 million in 2024), per life saved, which was estimated to be 2.9 per year.
TPWS is where a little light comes on saying it would be a good idea to brake now because you passed a signal at danger. Only very fancy versions of TPWS will actually apply the brakes for you.
And then we had the Southall and Ladbroke Grove crashes a few years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladbroke_Grove_rail_crash
> Both crashes would have been prevented by an operational automatic train protection (ATP) system, wider fitting of which had been rejected on cost grounds. The crash severely damaged public confidence in the management and regulation of safety of Britain's privatised railway system.
But even then, an inquiry asked to look specifically into ATP determined we were right to reject it, it was just Too. Fucking. Expensive.
> Since both the Paddington and Southall crashes had reopened public debate on ATP, a separate joint inquiry considering the issue in the light of both crashes was also held in 2000; it confirmed the rejection of ATP and the mandatory adoption of a cheaper and less effective system, but noted a mismatch between public opinion and cost-benefit analysis.
> "Have computers control everything" is four words to say, but it's millions or billions more in money, and adds years to the projects.
The delays, the reduced amount of infrastructure built, and passing on of those costs in ticket prices causes people to use other forms of transport that are less safe thereby causing more casualties than a slightly less safe rail system would.
> They still need a person on board to be sure that nobody is stuck in the doors or wedged between the train and platform before the train starts moving.
Why do they need someone?
Skytain in Vancouver is fully automated and driverless with no attendant on board. Grade separated, doors automatically close, and there are sensors that trigger if someone enters the guideway.
That's a "nobody's dead yet" scenario. Safety standards require full platform doors at all stations for attendant-free operation, i.e. the platform has wall-to-ceiling barriers, the train arrives perfectly aligned (which means zero variation in train configuration, which rules out almost all mainline stations that accept different operators services), and the platform doors open and close in sync with the train doors.
Anything less is begging to get someone wedged in there as the train drives off, even if it's just a limb or a trailing bag strap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_screen_doors
> In June 2023, the operator of the Vancouver SkyTrain, TransLink announced a feasibility study into installing platform screen doors on the Expo and Millennium lines. Such installation was previously deemed infeasible, due to SkyTrain's diverse fleet and different door positions. However, with the acquisition of the Alstom Mark V trains, which will replace the ageing Mark I, the door positions allow for a feasibility study to proceed.
EDIT: I found some SkyTrain stats for you. 2016-2025, 1 fatal train-passenger interaction on the platform, 36 fatal in the guideway. Most were intentional suicide attempts.
https://www.technicalsafetybc.ca/technologies/railways/skytr...
I am aware, iirc the rate doubled after covid with most being self harm which is why the platform door discussion has started again. Primarily to prevent suicides and the resulting system shutdowns as the number of unintentional major injuries or deaths has been pretty low over its 40 years of no drivers or attendants and being the 4th busiest in canada/usa. The two new lines currently under construction right now will also not have platform doors.
So despite being fully automated is comparable with most other major metros/train systems that have a driver/attendant with the only metro's performing significantly better being the ones with platform doors - hence my comment of asking "why is an attendant needed for automation?" when it doesn't significantly improve safety in the same way doors would.
in the end we still may not end up with platform doors even thou the study can proceed now as the cost will be astronomical and always with safety systems there might not be the appetite for it.
So in the end it comes down to cost-benefit.
As Skytrain has no attendants, there's a certain level of risk of passenger injury and death no matter how good the sensors are. If Skytrain had platform doors, there would likely be less, but probably never zero, and TransLink baulk at the cost (for now).
Other systems, e.g. the Docklands Light Railway, which has attendants that can also drive if needed, are OK with paying those attendants (for now). I presume they've done a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it's cheaper to keep paying humans to ensure every train departs safely, and to operate the manual controls if the automation fails, than it is to upgrade the system to the point that doesn't require them and is also considered safe.
Skytrain is from the 1990s. However elevators have been fully automated since before I can remember (1960s is my guess, but that is a guess if you care to look it up I'll stand corrected)
As long as vision zero is considered more of a gross infringement on personal freedums than a laudable goal, making trains as safe as they are uniquely fit to become is not exactly a great way to allocate funds to maximize impact. Trains are already very safe. Even where they currently lack 4 layers of fail-safe systems operated at a level where that still permits reliable&punctual service. The same money on making them shine could be spent on improving car infrastructure (or even removing some car infrastructure!) for greater expected harm reduction.
In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's.
But Toledo-Madrid it's a special high speed network with thousands of daily users heading Madrid to work, which is just 1h away from Toledo.
Still, I will always be pro-train because they can mass deliver goods at much higher ratio than by truck.
"In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's."
That's patently false, as Spain has the largest High-speed rail network in the world after China and it has seen constant expansion for the last 30 years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Spain
Maintenance and expansion are two different things. Governments of the day tend to favour big announcements for shiny new things, while simultaneously deferring maintenance whenever they can to redirect money to various other priorities.
I think you have to talk about how this is measured. Their network is huge, but frequencies are low and the maintenance costs per KM of track are very high relative to ridership. If you just think about the metric of KM of high-speed track, it's true, Spain has a larger network than, for example, Japan. But Japan is sending high-speed trains down some of its lines every 3 and a half minutes! Nothing remotely like that is happening in Spain.
I'm from Spain, I know it well. Just check what happened with short-distance trains.
By now, I'd ask which short-distance trains...
With short-distance trains…
to pueblos with 50 people…
But sure, keep twisting the truth to suit your political agenda.
Massive disaster!
I still wonder how this adds up against the constant daily carnage of automobile transportation?
EU statistics say that per km traveled there are 28x more deaths when traveling by car then by train. With trains you basically don't get passenger deaths except those which end up in media. Also in the train related deaths almost everything are not passengers but people on tracks or level crossing users.
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271032
Atlas Shrugged in real life
The incompetence in the world that is likely the underlying cause for this, is a serious cancer that is ruining our society. We need to speak out even against what seems like lesser issues, because we normalize that behaviour until it perverts everything.
How do you even speak to the ineffable idea of 'incompetence'? How do you remediate it? More draconian, individualized worker surveillance?
This feeds into the idea that the problem with safety these days are lazy workers, not the fact that companies are increasingly extending work hours beyond what's reasonable, firing keystone employees and shoveling more work onto the remaining individuals, and operating with a general disregard of regulatory safety guidelines around training and rest.
The reality is very different: https://www.railway.supply/renfe-rejects-drivers-union-claim...
> On rolling stock, the union wants lasting technical fixes for reliability. It further calls for correct application of breaks in driving time under article 36 of Royal Decree 929/2020 and an end to the block on early-retirement reduction coefficients under Royal Decree 2621/1986. Two further demands concern a May 7 agreement on hiring new entrants as trainee drivers and a 1990 agreement on support for drivers involved in incidents where a person is hit by a train.
>On new drivers, Renfe called the claim that recruits are being kept on training scholarships false. It said none of the 402 drivers who have joined are on a scholarship.
The incompetence isn't necessarily with the workers, it can be coming from those at the top.
Yes. Modern levels of reliability and safety don't come from workers trying harder or caring more, it requires systems, procedures, controls, redundancy, fail-safes.
We could return to basing hiring decisions on merit.
Help me understand a historical period when this was ever the case.
Social historians have been debunking the thought-terminating cliche that we ever had a trend of merit-based hiring since time immemorial:
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-myth-of-meritocracy-r...
https://archive.org/details/meritocracymyth0000mcna_n6g9
https://historicalstudiesineducation.ca/index.php/edu_hse-rh...
What’s it based on now?
Huge assumptions there
Whoa. Let's not go crazy here.
without a doubt someone made a lot of money by arguing against the regulations required to prevent this.
we need to eliminate profit-based motives for safety critical areas.
Why do worker accept to work in such conditions? Its like driving tired every day. Eventually you fuck up. Where was the union?
> How do you even speak to the ineffable idea of 'incompetence'?
I think it has to start with daylight: all of the relevant info accessible to the public.
Adversaries can/will counter with fake data, narratives, etc, but if there's a trustable source of that daylight data that is a huge start.
Incompetence and laziness are very different things. You can have very hard working, engaged, active people that are still incompetent for the job they are supposed to do.
> This feeds into the idea that the problem with safety these days are lazy workers, not the fact that companies are increasingly extending work hours beyond what's reasonable, firing keystone employees and shoveling more work onto the remaining individuals, and operating with a general disregard of regulatory safety guidelines around training and rest.
It's both. The nihilism (see France riots for ex) and general incompetence that many of us see in the workplace or in our dealings with, for example, government agencies, and in our dealings with others is obviously there too and needs to be rooted out.
How do you deal with incompetence? In Europe I have no idea because of labor laws. In America we should probably be aggressively firing bad workers and grifters, and at the same time increasing wages and benefits and providing for items like safety and proper rest for those who actually want to show up and get things done.
lol this is spain dude. these people are not working long hours
Let me fix this for you. People in Spain work exactly the same than in other European countries.
You think all people in all European countries work exactly the same amount of hours?
You think that people in Spain work a lot less than other European countries?
Well people in Spain have a lot less working hours than in other European countries such as Greece, Poland, and Malta. Whether work hours means doing actual work or just loafing around is harder to measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
From your own link, of all the EU nation states Spain is pretty much middle-of-the-pack for per-worker hours.
Another counterpoint: higher work hour countries have higher rates of death per kilometer of active track [0]
Greece (highest in the EU for work hours) = 22.3 rail deaths per 1k kilometer of track followed by Portugal (another high work hour ranking) with 6.2, Portugal (about 200 more hours than Spain annual) at 6.2, and Hungary (at about 100 more hours) at 5.8.
The only two countries with less deaths per 1K KM of track and more work hours are Ireland and Estonia. All the rest (Denmark, Sweden, Austria, Finland, Slovenia, Luxembourg) have less annual work hours than Spain.
[0] https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...
List european countries with summer provision for friday half off
Probably none, as those are exclusive decisions of each company and vary wildly between different activities.
Workers that toke half of the Friday agreed with their companies to start Monday-Friday one hour earlier, so what's the problem exactly?
Once upon a time I did root cause analysis professionally, and a trainer told us if you attributed the root cause to people without finding malice you were just being lazy. At the very least I doubt anyone to blame here was actually involved in the accident, but someone who decided it was not in the budget to put an automated system in place faster.
They had an automated system, it had failed earlier in the day in that section causing trains to be signalled to stop. Then they had a manual go-slow human backup protocol which appears to also have not been observed - some drivers were given clearance to continue as normal. Swiss cheese of compounded failures, with tragic results.
And what are the systemic practices in place that led to people not following the official protocol?
Because if the system punished compliance and rewarded such behavior, you now have a systemic issue underlying the "people are lazy".
> And what are the systemic practices in place that led to people not following the official protocol?
I guess we'll find out. Apparently one of two drivers who were given the go ahead for normal operations requested additional confirmation because he or she (rightly) thought go-slow was the expected response for transit resumption under the fallback protocol. Some incompetence in the control authority Adif, then, but I'm sure that'll be the focus of the inquiry they will no doubt have.
To be fair, train crashes happen rarely enough that the safety procedures are in place and work (at least most of the time).
In Spain they appear to happen rather frequently
I'm so fucking tired of you people constantly trying to reduce human accountability after accidents like this that claim lives. It's always the fault of the system and never the fault of any people. As if we are all just cogs in a machine that is controlled by no-one. It is your fatalistic worldview that is directly causing accidents like this. How many more people have to die before we can fix things? Just stop.
Obviously individual people can be at fault, but it is this further process of asking _why_ individual people fail—pointing to systems, procedures, cultures—that has (in part) contributed to the extraordinary safety of aviation.
So I would say on the contrary, it is that systems worldview that actually leads to lasting improvements. Because human nature is not changing in a hurry.
Systems and procedure are created by people.
Culture is literally just “how people collectively behave”.
It’s people all the way down!
If you update the artefact without replacing its creator, they’ll just “fix” it to their taste again when you leave.
i personally think that incompetence is actually the norm. that such things like trains even exist, imo is very much due to extraordinary people being incentivized to do extraordinary things. trains are extraordinary to me. this is not to diminish your sentiment in any way.
in fact, i think your sentiment is fundamentally the same that drives extraordinary people to do extraordinary things! it's a deep dissatisfaction with the way things are, and when it's coupled with resources, support, etc., that's when impressive things happen!
this also means that i don't think it helps much to shame people broadly or politicize the matter.
Who wants to design a basic cryptographic p2p lock between trains that limit their speed 30km/h if they're not able to get proof they're alone on a track; when the alternative is to debate endlessly about whom to blame, and which billion-dollar conglomerate has the technical prowess to sit on the committee to debate the specs for a much worse system.
Of course HN wants to fix train crashes with a "cryptographic p2p lock". On a blockchain, presumably.
no clear cause has yet been named. it can be many things and ultimately they will always blame human error because it gives away the least information about what really happened.
malfuncitoning equipment. humans, geopolitical agendas against europe... there can be a lot of things going on here.
dont jump to conclusions and be skeptical of what people shout.
The only way to achieve higher levels of competence is to enforce higher levels of accountability. Over the last couple of years Spain has suffered major infrastructural catastrophes without any leadership being held accountable at all. It’s not unreasonable to consider jail time or even capital punishment for such gross negligence.
> It’s not unreasonable to consider jail time or even capital punishment for such gross negligence.
It is entirely unreasonable to consider capital punishment.
* an eye for an eye solves nothing - it doesn't bring dead people back to life, it just results in another person killed
* it's not an effective deterrent, it won't change how people act more than the risk of jail-time will
* it's unethical. It sounds like 'justice' if your idea of justice is simple retribution, but it completely undermines the concept of redemption - it advocates treating people as unfixable and unable to atone for their 'sins' and instead of limiting the pain and suffering - it spreads pain to more people
* no system is perfectly and inevitable you will end up punishing somebody with death based on faulty / flawed evidence that only later comes to light as being flawed/faulty. You can't bring a dead person back to life and say "sorry we got it wrong"
* finally - and perhaps most critically - tragedies such as these are almost the result of failures across an entire system with 10s, 100s, sometimes 1000s of people each culpable to varying degrees with many 'sliding doors' moments where such a tragedy could have been avoided had a different decision been taken. Sure you can always simplify things and point to the symbolic figurehead and say they are ultimately accountable and should take the ultimate responsibility for the group's failure (bonus points if in doing so you highlight how well paid they are to take on such a responsibility). But what you'll arrive at isn't justice and higher standards - instead you'll just have another dead person, killed in cold blood and the generic hope that somehow that additional death will act as a stronger driver of change than the already very real deaths that occurred in the tragedy itself.
> or even capital punishment
You lost me at that part. It is entirely unreasonable to consider that in the vast majority of the world, where state-sanctioned killing of citizens has been abolished.
The OP wrote:
> capital punishment for such gross negligence
"gross negligence" is a very specific legal test.
> Gross negligence is a lack of care that demonstrates reckless disregard for the safety or lives of others, which is so great it appears to be a conscious violation of other people's rights to safety. Gross negligence is a heightened degree of negligence representing an extreme departure from the ordinary standard of care. Falling between intent to do wrongful harm and ordinary negligence, gross negligence is defined as willful, wanton, and reckless conduct affecting the life or property or another.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/gross_negligence
Your viewpoint sounds good in argument on forums, and I'm sure it scores you points.
But there's a reason they used to execute people in the public square.
And people flocked to watch executions - for entertainment.
Capital punishment has never been about deterrence, nor has it ever been an effective deterrent.
It has never been an effective deterrent? You really believe that?
Not even once?
But that reason wasn't good.
Tell that to the relatives of the dead. What you said was true and today is true. But will it be true tomorrow?
At least the people responsible for wasting about a quarter billion euros on trains that are too wide for Spains train tunnels seem to have resigned.
The history was a little more complex than that. The trains were not too wide, they were the right legal size where ordered.
The problem is while the trains were being built, the laws changed, requiring now extra space between trains and tunnels to evacuate people.
The only solution would be to dump all the trains and start from scratch in a new design for narrower trains that still keep the same comfort and safety levels. This is not realistic.
If you order a car that has legally given the green light to be built in 2026, the government can't say in 2027 that your car must had measured 1m less. Would be unfair for buyer and maker. Unless the government can show a very solid reason, they must accept the car model for the expected years of car life. This is why we still can drive legally cars with no airbags, and with toy seat belts. Cars that no way would be accepted to be built today.
Who ordered the trains was doing everything right, the problem was created by who changed the specifications in the middle of the process.
Is resignation a true restitution for wasting a quarter billion euros? Is the tax payer made whole?
its not only in spain where this type of issues have been on the uptick. people not getting jailed can be indicative also of the whole story not being told.
We don't tolerate capital punishment as society, keep walking cowboy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise
Your point being ?
you question indicates what the parent warned against
At this moment, may be incompetence, but I wouldn't discard still a sabotage that go out of hand.
A computer system failed, stopping 6 trains, we don't know why. The proprietary automatic brake system of Siemens was working fine for 30 years, but it was too old, maybe too expensive and being replaced by a different system (non proprietary?). This shouldn't had caused any problem, as stopping the trains when a problem happens in the railway is the by-default security protocol.
Somebody then ordered the trains to keep moving, even if there was still a train stopped. We still don't know why this person didn't saw that light in the screen, or why in the age of mobile phones and internet, he/she was unable to warn about the second train.
And a Spanish train that should be moving slowly after such events by protocols, was moving at 150-200 Km/h near a train station before to crash into the Italian train, in a perfectly sunny day. It does not make any sense and, seemly, it goes directly against the security protocol.
We don't know still if the machinist tried to stop the train and the brake system failed, or didn't even tried to stop the train (maybe suffered a dismay or a heart attack?). Survivors say that they didn't noticed a decrease of speed before the impact. Black boxes will clear that in the next weeks.
For foreign journalists, to paint Spain as a third world country is practically a sport, and they love to write the word 'siesta' for some strange fetish, but the reality is that this is one of the most modern high-speed train systems in the planet, and worked like a charm for more than 30 years until now.
And this must be taken in a whole context of hybrid war, including strange delays and strange train accidents all around Europe in the last two or three years (Poland, France, etc). We can safely assume that hybrid war will be more vicious the more desperate are the Russians, and this another added source of chaos happened suspiciously close to the November Spanish elections with plenty of strikes and riots that happened to occur overnight.
Taking the whole context, the probability of all of that happening by chance at the same time before the elections, is basically zero.
> And a Spanish train that should be moving slowly after such events
Update. A second security system should had stopped the train automatically in the next red semaphore (or reduced the velocity to 40Km/h) without machinist intervention. That system was down also. And control had 17 minutes to warn the incoming train and to talk directly with the Italian train, but they apparently failed to do it.
So at least there are two different automatized computer security systems that failed on a row, plus a control center that acted in a strange way, plus a machinist that may, or may not, had tried to pull the brakes and she is missing.
And now they are saying that a former minister of employment was traveling in that train and she is also missing.
It wouldn't be the first time in history sabotage by "Russians" resulted in the collision of opposing forces near Toledo.
And wouldn't be the first also that "Russians messing with elections" meant exactly: Russians messing with elections.
If you have a better explanation by all what is happening in Europe just right now, with perfectly coordinated teams of people seeding chaos and unrest, I will hear it with maximum interest.
And yes, I know that Trump is not exactly a friend of anything latino related unless he can take advantage of it, and is specially unfriendly with the Spanish president.
My bet is that all of this will suddenly stop after Russia collapses by the self-destruction of their economy triggered by a chain of Putin's unhinged decisions
Could it be cultural? I remember after the Asiana Airlines crash, the experts were saying part of the problem was due to culture.
I was just listening to the EconTalk podcast, and the guest was a Spanish demographer that specifically said that Spanish train system was being starved for funding in the past 10 years or so. This is because the population is aging, and all of the growth in the economy is being directed towards pensions and health care for the rapidly growing number of retirees.
I feel that mixing up best picture Oscars was a watershed moment...It sort of spoke to me that the whole world is going to shit....
Ayn Rand gets a lot of hate from the philosophy world, and Atlas Shrugged is definitely not a good novel by any means, but you have to give her credit for basically predicting where we are now from way back in the 50's.
The Library of Congress rated it the second most influential book of all time, after the Bible.
That's why I read it.
It's very cool, especially on HN, to say how terrible it is. But, as we used to say in rebuttal: scoreboard!
I can understand a lot of the dislike of that novel, but her description of how the United States slowly falls apart due to culturally-reinforced incompetence is worth appreciating.
I was incredulous, I wondered what sort of LoC does book rankings like it's Buzzfeed, I thought "Maybe it's the LoC after a Trump-infestation or DOGE", but (1):
> In 1991 the Book of the Month Club and Library of Congress asked readers to name the most influential book in their lives: Atlas Shrugged came in second only to the Bible.
The fact that you equate a survey result (who knows who heard of the survey, or if there was a campaign to skew the results) to the LoC giving it a rating, and "that's why I read it", and you think this is a good rebuttal, reveals to me a lot about you.
(1) https://www.atlassociety.org/post/ayn-rands-atlas-shrugged-p...
Regardless of how that one survey was done AS ends up on many best US fiction book lists. The 90s may have also been one of the AS peaks, as I recall being told to read from multiple people (family and teachers). From your own link:
The novel made the New York Public Library’s list of Best Books of the Century in 1996, and Radcliffe Publishing ranked it 92 out of the top 100 novels of the 20th century. In 1999, Atlas Shrugged was number 37 in the list of 100 Favorite Novels of Librarians. A Harris poll placed Atlas Shrugged on America’s Top 10 Favorite Book List in 2008, and The Modern Library ranked it the number one best novel published in the English language in 2009. The novel is listed as number six on Boston Library’s list of 100 Most Influential Books of the Century, and it ranks number five on the list of the 20 Most Inspirational Books ever written. Atlas Shrugged has been translated into 14 languages, including Chinese (2007).
From a story perspective, I found AS too long and preferred The Fountainhead. Were they influential to my younger self? Sure, much like the Bible was to me as an atheist. A story with both good and bad ideas to draw from.
Uh okay, but I read it on the library of Congress website.
I read the novel about 24 years ago. I was a teenager, and I read a lot of books. Seemed like a good enough reason at the time.
Expand, I'm interested in this take
From what I can remember (of reading the book 25 years ago), it predicted an increasing suspicion and resentment of excellence and competence, coinciding with a rise in socialist sentiments. The net result is that various aspects of society would begin to break down as the total amount of competence in the culture vanishes.
I think she attributed too much of the symptoms merely to socialism; obviously the world is more complex than that. But we've got this train crash, the ongoing issues with Boeing airplanes, several multi-billion dollar public infrastructure projects across America that have stalled and will likely never be completed (like the California high speed rail system), the list goes on.
To me it seems the opposite is happening: the push for higher profits by the Capitalists is overriding the competence of rank and file, resulting in these disasters. And all these profits just shoring up wealth that is accruing unequally to those same Capitalists is what is inciting socialist sentiments.
To me Ayn Rand's writings always seemed like an Economics Horror story: effective at instilling dread in its readers, but of some highly unrealistic boogeyman.
When I said that the world is more complex than that, I meant that she oversimplified it. To say that the opposite has happened is also an oversimplification.
It's a more correct oversimplification than the other one though ;-)
Like I'd be really curious to see evidence of people saying, either directly or indirectly, that "we should be suspicious of competence and excellence."
On the other hand, you already mentioned concrete evidence of money-seeking causing disasters: Boeing.
Did capitialism cause this train crash? I suppose it is too early to say what exactly happened.
Right, we don't know about this one, but typically there are some corners being cut somewhere or some other money motive lurking in the background, like the Boeing one OP mentioned.
Why don’t you like AS?
Won’t speak for the poster, but in my experience the incompetence of the average person is only exceeded by the incompetence of the ownership class. The people Ayn Rand lauded are usually the largest obstacle to actually Getting Shit Done.
What is your experience of the incompetence of the ownership class?
Competence in what, is the question. Obviously they are competent in making money. The biggest scammers are also competent in making money too, though.
Look at the current US President, for instance. He is richer than any of us will ever be, but what exactly is his competence?
Look at the world around. Look at the train crash.
Do any great companies have poor executive direction/leadership?
"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality."
Incompetence on whose part?
So incompetent we don't even know who to blame
Autonation is the only true way out of incompetence.
Eventually everyone will come around e/acc.
You meant "automation", right?
For a moment there my first tought was that "autonation" might be something like the concept of a nation made by the individual itself or something like that.
We need to create a word for typos/autocomplete errors that have a positive result like this on the reader.
Automation of a bad process or security measure is not a way out of the incompetence of people who designed it. Automation of garbage only brings more garbage.
Why would anyone automate a bad process.
When Waymo automates self-driving it isn't automating bad drivers. So are robots on Amazon warehouses
A simple solution would be for all trains to have self recoding GPS which they probably all have and log their location on an internet map plus marking all the switches and allow open viewing to public and passengers to monitor their own train versus others. Ai can also be used to set the alarm.
how is GPS going to differentiate between two trains on a collision course vs. two trains on separate, but neighbouring tracks?
The GPS location as well as track ID gets logged every few sec. They probably already have the info. Its not rocket science; that is how their systems probably work. They probably log the ID of previous and incoming switch too. They probably have all of this, just make it public.
How did we not think of this earlier?!
Insane take. This has like 10x the number of failure modes than a proper signalling system with verifiable software design.
This is not run the system, it is a way to monitor and see if they are going to kill you!
And what are you going to do, pull the emergency brake "because an app told me to"?
The conductors and everybody else will be warned by the same app; passengers are going to pull the alarms. Collision is not fate!