spanish train fails to slow down for curve: 78 dead

[MRB_Doom]

Madrid (CNN) -- A passenger train derailed as it hurtled around a curve in northwestern Spain on Wednesday, killing 77 people and injuring more than 100, officials said.

It came in like a 'torpedo'. Sounds pretty nasty. Anyone from Spain who can give us more details?

[Hellbent]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23465992

[MRB_Doom]

I already created a thread about this but you got the video up so ok.

[Hellbent]

Oops, sorry about that! Apparently the conductor admits he made a mistake and "wants to die".

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57595638/spain-train-derailment-driver-francisco-jose-garzon-amo-detained-by-police/

A conversation the driver had with station officials immediately after the accident isn't helping his cause, Robert Nisbet of CBS News' British partner Sky News reported on "CBS This Morning" from Santiago de Compostela.

"I messed up; I want to die," Francisco Jose Garzon Amo allegedly said, according to local media reports. "So many people dead, so many people dead."

And in an interview with The Associated Press, an American passenger injured on the train said he saw on a TV monitor screen inside his car that the train was traveling 121 mph seconds before the crash — far above the 50 mph speed limit on the curve where it derailed.

[Acid]

70 MPH, no biggie.

[durian]

Interesting piece here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/26/spain-train-crash-police-driver

"Garzón is suspected of criminal recklessness, but has not yet been charged. Spanish rail experts have argued that mere negligence cannot explain the crash: that the "black boxes" recovered from the train will show that a technical fault was partly – or perhaps entirely – to blame for what happened."

[Belial]

I work at a train manufacturer and pretty much everyone I've spoken to about this agrees that it couldn't have happened without some technical malfunction. There are just too many failsafe mechanisms in modern trains.

[Hellbent]

Belial said:

I work at a train manufacturer and pretty much everyone I've spoken to about this agrees that it couldn't have happened without some technical malfunction. There are just too many failsafe mechanisms in modern trains.

At least three alarms went off inside the train that crashed last week in northwestern Spain moments before it derailed, prompting the panicked driver to activate the brakes three times even as he talked on the telephone with another employee, an examination of the train’s two black boxes released Friday revealed. The driver, Francisco José Garzón Amo, had answered a ticket inspector’s call on his cellphone and was traveling at a permitted speed of 199 kilometers per hour, or 123 miles per hour, before the train switched to another track in a reduced-speed zone. During the call, an alarm went off in the driver’s cabin. The black boxes recorded Mr. Garzón screaming as he tried to activate the brake. The train’s speed dropped to 195 k.p.h., or 121 m.p.h., but another alarm sounded, 500 yards from the curve where the accident took place. Mr. Garzón activated an emergency brake three seconds later. A third alarm sounded, and 13 train cars started derailing. Mr. Garzón activated another emergency brake as the train careened from the tracks and then slammed into a wall at 153 k.p.h., or 95 m.p.h., nearly twice the speed limit. Mr. Garzón was arrested last week and charged with reckless homicide in the deaths of 79 people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/world/europe/spain-alarms-warned-trains-driver-before-accident.html?_r=0