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.
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)
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
"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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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?
It is distasteful and crass that one train correctly stopped due to a signalling failure, the other did not stop due to another signalling failure, inattention or error. Had the stationary train been moving or the moving train been stationary this would not have happened or it would have been significantly less tragic. The tragedy is that the system was left in such a dangerous state. The real world doesn't obey the laws of physics you wish for, it's full of external variables including careless, inattentive and greedy people who sometimes cause a lot of harm. My pointing out the system that caused the accident is not the same as saying I'm glad they're dead. Accusing me of being crass and distasteful smacks of a holier-than-thou attitude, or nobody understands suffering like I do. In short, I wasn't laughing.
It was no joke here either, the headline was inaccurate. There were not "two high-speed trains". One train stopped due to a signalling failure, the other did not stop due to a to another signalling failure. Had the stationary train been moving or the moving train been stationary this would not have happened or it would have been significantly less tragic.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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:
"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.
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.
[OP] evilmonkey19 | 10 hours ago
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...
[OP] evilmonkey19 | 6 hours ago
pantalaimon | an hour ago
silverFork | 9 hours ago
Rapzid | 9 hours ago
nom | 9 hours ago
dcrazy | 7 hours ago
paxy | 9 hours ago
FeteCommuniste | 9 hours ago
paxy | 9 hours ago
bluGill | 9 hours ago
amiga386 | 8 hours ago
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.
graemep | 7 hours ago
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.
katbyte | 7 hours ago
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.
amiga386 | 7 hours ago
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...
katbyte | 5 hours ago
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.
amiga386 | 4 hours ago
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.
bluGill | 7 hours ago
lebuffon | 7 hours ago
I would think that the software is the weakest link in the chain.
manarth | 9 hours ago
QuantumNomad_ | 9 hours ago
mailund | 7 hours ago
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...
QuantumNomad_ | 7 hours ago
ncruces | 6 hours ago
formerly_proven | 8 hours ago
anthk | 9 hours ago
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.
Kurtz79 | 9 hours ago
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
hylaride | 9 hours ago
anthk | 8 hours ago
gpvos | 8 hours ago
hdhxbsbsbshs | 8 hours ago
to pueblos with 50 people…
But sure, keep twisting the truth to suit your political agenda.
mazu3 | 8 hours ago
boringg | 9 hours ago
gpvos | 9 hours ago
FranOntanaya | 8 hours ago
katbyte | 7 hours ago
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.
edelbitter | 7 hours ago
dist-epoch | 9 hours ago
> 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...
Bluestein | 9 hours ago
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.-
hylaride | 9 hours ago
Alas, maintenance isn't sexy for governments.
otherme123 | 7 hours ago
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.
AdrianB1 | 7 hours ago
pbrum | 7 hours ago
ethfan | 9 hours ago
gpvos | 9 hours ago
swed420 | 9 hours ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271032
billbuild | 9 hours ago
gpvos | 9 hours ago
lopis | 7 hours ago
rationalist | 4 hours ago
Although for trains, it looks like the middle might be the safest (in case of a rear-end collision).
purpleidea | 8 hours ago
bob1029 | 8 hours ago
redoxate | 8 hours ago
noJiveTV | 8 hours ago
gonzalohm | 8 hours ago
qup | 7 hours ago
hdhxbsbsbshs | 8 hours ago
consumer451 | 8 hours ago
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.
bob1029 | 7 hours ago
> 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
qup | 7 hours ago
But there's a reason they used to execute people in the public square.
klaff | 5 hours ago
codeduck | 3 hours ago
Capital punishment has never been about deterrence, nor has it ever been an effective deterrent.
pbrum | 7 hours ago
saidnooneever | 7 hours ago
sva_ | 7 hours ago
AdrianB1 | 7 hours ago
pvaldes | 4 hours ago
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.
footydude | 6 hours ago
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.
pvaldes | 4 hours ago
bijohugy | 8 hours ago
cameldrv | 8 hours ago
danielvaughn | 8 hours ago
whynotrand | 7 hours ago
Thegn | 7 hours ago
signatoremo | 6 hours ago
amanaplanacanal | 2 hours ago
Look at the current US President, for instance. He is richer than any of us will ever be, but what exactly is his competence?
freejazz | 2 hours ago
whynotrand | 5 hours ago
qup | 7 hours ago
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!
netsharc | 6 hours ago
> 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...
matwood | 6 hours ago
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.
kbelder | 4 hours ago
snikeris | 7 hours ago
pbrum | 7 hours ago
danielvaughn | 6 hours ago
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.
keeda | 5 hours ago
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.
rationalist | 4 hours ago
keeda | an hour ago
danielvaughn | 4 hours ago
keeda | an hour ago
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.
paimapi | 8 hours ago
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.
AdrianB1 | 7 hours ago
snikeris | 7 hours ago
ImHereToVote | 7 hours ago
paimapi | 5 hours ago
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...
freejazz | 2 hours ago
blks | an hour ago
nullocator | 7 hours ago
panarky | 6 hours ago
ericmay | 7 hours ago
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.
leesec | 7 hours ago
pvaldes | 5 hours ago
baobabKoodaa | 4 hours ago
tchalla | 3 hours ago
nradov | 2 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a...
paimapi | 2 hours ago
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...
avereveard | 2 hours ago
pvaldes | an hour ago
Workers that toke half of the Friday agreed with their companies to start Monday-Friday one hour earlier, so what's the problem exactly?
superxpro12 | 5 hours ago
we need to eliminate profit-based motives for safety critical areas.
pstuart | 3 hours ago
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.
avereveard | 2 hours ago
ai-x | 7 hours ago
Eventually everyone will come around e/acc.
AdrianB1 | 7 hours ago
yomismoaqui | 7 hours ago
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.
saidnooneever | 7 hours ago
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.
threetonesun | 7 hours ago
guiriduro | 7 hours ago
sdoering | 7 hours ago
Because if the system punished compliance and rewarded such behavior, you now have a systemic issue underlying the "people are lazy".
guiriduro | 6 hours ago
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.
port11 | 5 hours ago
baobabKoodaa | 3 hours ago
baobabKoodaa | 3 hours ago
awhitby | 2 hours ago
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.
jiggawatts | 2 hours ago
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.
soon_to_be_sb | 7 hours ago
yowayb | 7 hours ago
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.
athrowaway3z | 6 hours ago
baobabKoodaa | 3 hours ago
pvaldes | 6 hours ago
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.
suburban_strike | 5 hours ago
pvaldes | 4 hours ago
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
pvaldes | 2 hours ago
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.
coopykins | 8 hours ago
I can't remember the last time I read good news related to my country.
adventured | 8 hours ago
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.
omnimus | 16 minutes ago
NoLinkToMe | 8 hours ago
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.
0xFAT_GUY | 6 hours ago
ncr100 | 6 hours ago
graemep | 8 hours ago
> 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.
bamboozled | 7 hours ago
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.
graemep | 7 hours ago
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.
lopis | 7 hours ago
nradov | 2 hours ago
https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/ipsavage/436.pdf
left-struck | 7 hours ago
acchow | 7 hours ago
There is a risk of just being outside. Usually due to cars.
sfn42 | 4 hours ago
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.
HALtheWise | 3 hours ago
amanaplanacanal | 2 hours ago
gavinsyancey | an hour ago
jakedata | 8 hours ago
qs1ykyusPlate | 7 hours ago
arcza | 7 hours ago
tasuki | 6 hours ago
> Distasteful and totally crass.
That's culture-dependent. In some cultures it's not unusual to joke about tragedies (even when they are one's own).
jakedata | 4 hours ago
[OP] evilmonkey19 | 6 hours ago
jakedata | 4 hours ago
AlexITC | 8 hours ago
On another topic, I shall reconsider using bus over train for my trips.
ChrisArchitect | 8 hours ago
silverFork | 8 hours ago
fmpfmp | 7 hours ago
silverFork | 7 hours ago
arcza | 7 hours ago
silverFork | 7 hours ago
pipe01 | 7 hours ago
ck_one | 7 hours ago
electroweak | 7 hours ago
rsync | 6 hours ago
It seems impossible to imagine that there are any layers of defense in depth involved here… Because it should be so easy to avoid.
namibj | 3 hours ago
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.
ryathal | an hour ago
pbrum | 7 hours ago
UltraSane | 2 hours ago
thundercleeze | 6 hours ago
gmargari | 6 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempi_train_crash
No not exactly an "accident".BonitaPersona | 4 hours ago
Yes, same government. 0 resignations, 0 political consequences, 0 apologies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_rail_disaster
6510 | 6 hours ago
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.
alkyon | 6 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Adamuz_rail_disaster
nemoniac | 4 hours ago
prmph | 3 hours ago
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.
Zambyte | 2 hours ago
"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.
johnea | 4 hours ago
I still wonder how this adds up against the constant daily carnage of automobile transportation?
prmph | 3 hours ago
You rarely hear of such in Japan.
gloosx | 2 hours ago
Did it fail somehow which lead to this accident? I think such systems must be redundant enough to survive even without power/computers?
gavinsyancey | 2 hours ago
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.
gloosx | an hour ago
gavinsyancey | 55 minutes ago