Spain train crash: What we know after two trains crashed with dozens feared dead

(bbc.com)

33 points by ZeljkoS3 hours ago

5 comments

notenchange1 hour ago
Reading the text it seems to me this is due to a very widespread issue in Spain and other southern European countries: people don’t care about the warnings because there are too many false positives.That’s why people here, when they hear the fire alarm they just wait for it to go off: the probability that it is actually a fire is minuscule… but the alarm triggers a lot.Not sure how to actually solve this… but I’m also not making excuses for what happened. High speed trains is not the same as a fire alarm in some office building, the people in charge should be held responsible somehow.
- coopykins1 hour ago
 Something similar is happening in my region after the flood that happened two years ago: The alarm was raised late; Now, even mild rain is triggering an alert.Guess whats the consequence of that? Less and less people pay attention to the alerts.
 - ricardobayes38 minutes ago
 What you mention makes me frustrated, as it also signals the infrastructure is so underdeveloped even moderate rain grinds daily life to a halt: kids don't go to school if rain is forecast. We need to elevate our professionalism in Spain and not accept African-level infrastructure in the 21st century. It's really sad within one continent we have countries producing AI and photon computing, and others can't even figure out how to put gutters and rain drains.
- 17186274401 hour ago
 It just means that a false positive rate is a as dangerous as a false negative rate. Just issuing a warning doesn't come for free when you are designing a security system.
 - karmakurtisaani1 hour ago
 This is very well illustrated in the fable Boy who cried false positive.
- avereveard31 minutes ago
 Because they don't get held responsible enough for bypissing procedures. Some system are too complex for fully automated operarions, and the human need to play along.Safety culture is blameless, but only if everyone plays along.
- pelagicAustral58 minutes ago
 > That’s why people here, when they hear the fire alarm they just wait for it to go offThis literally happened to me last night, I was having dinner at my apartment, and suddenly I start hearing a smoke alarm, but not quite inside the apartment, I just kept having dinner thinking "bah, someone probably burned a toast".Then it wont stop, I walk to door and hear people talking, still don't bother enough, wait a few minutes, then go out and my neighbor said "there are three fire trucks down there, I think it's a real one" hahhahaThe hallway was kind of hazy and smelled like burnt food, for sure... so I just grabbed my laptop and went out hahaa.
swiftcoder1 hour ago
The level of human negligence here is astounding. The system did exactly what it was supposed to (lock the train down if the track can't be confirmed clear), and then a human controller ordered the crew to override the system, and ordered them to proceed at an unsafe speed towards a similarly disabled train?
- crote48 minutes ago
 Whose negligence, though? "The system" isn't just the LZB equipment - the train dispatcher is just another cog inside the same system, and should be expected to occasionally fail just like every mechanical part.This isn't a game of Hot Potato where the last person touching it goes to jail for gross negligence. You have to look at it through a Swiss Cheese model: every individual safety layer can and will have holes, but a disaster can only occur when all of those holes align.Why did the LZB system fail? Why did the train dispatcher use the wrong backup procedure? Why did a backup procedure with zero safety checks even exist? Why did the train operator accept this backup procedure? Why did the train allow high-speed driving under those unsafe conditions?It does indeed seem like the train dispatcher made a big mistake, but that was far from the only thing that went wrong, and it would be myopic to use him as the scapegoat for a far larger systemic issue.
 - avereveard34 minutes ago
 Dispatcher, conductor at that time could not have know that dispatcher ordered manual bypass ignorig the rest of the guardrails of a traffic resume procedure
- wjnc1 hour ago
 I would argue that we should look at systems-level explanations. The human factor is so glaring we can get caught up in it. There are what, 50?, high speed trains in movement in Spain at the same time. Even GPS + Starlink + 1 monitor (is that 50k€?) could have prevented this. But it happened, and the question is what is going on with train security in Spain in general for people to (be able to) make such decisions.
 - Maken19 minutes ago
 The current control system dates from the early 90s. They started rolling a modern system with more redundancies and automatic blocking in 2022 but it's still not fully deployed.
 - 171862744047 minutes ago
 Trains are still not able to assess properly where they are, even using satellites and inside train sensors. Of course there is research on that, but it's still an unsolved problem. (Current alternative is to put markers in the track, but that's also expensive at scale.)
 - Pragmata41 minutes ago
 Yeah and that's fucking ridiculous and a damning indictment of the glaring incompetence of train companies.If I can have reasonably accurate gps readings of my phone while I'm on the train, there is zero reason for train companies to not have systems that are at least as accurate.
 - 171862744036 minutes ago
 > a damning indictment of the glaring incompetence of train companies.No, what I describe has nothing to do with the companies, that's the research state. It's just an indictment of you making bold statement about a subject, you don't now enough about.> I can have reasonably accurate gps readings of my phoneWould you dare to cross on a rope over a deep valley, blind using only GPS readings of your phone? Because that's kind what you are suggesting, expect you also move a few hundred other people.
 collabs17 minutes ago
 The way I think of it, divide the tracks into segments. Before you put a train on a segment, you must ask a question - is there a train on it. There are only two answers possible, No, and something else. If it is something else, stop. Don't let the train on that segment.There are optimizations possible like make segments smaller etc but the original algorithm is trivial. If we can't figure things out, we make segments longer and we slow down the trains until we can. I am positive for a sufficiently large track segment and a sufficiently slow train, we can always answer the question with a no.
 171862744012 minutes ago
 Congratulation you are reinventing 1890 state of the art.
 swiftcoder28 minutes ago
 > Would you dare to cross on a rope over a deep valley, blind using only GPS readings of your phone?Hang on, this is nothing at all like that - trains run on fixed tracks. The only bit of data we are interested in for collision avoidance is the linear offset along the track. Even the shittiest GPS fix of all-time would give a good-enough intersection with a fixed path to avoid crashing into a second stationary train in the open country-side (do you see any satellite line-of-sight blockers in the crash footage?)
 171862744014 minutes ago
 > The only bit of data we are interested in for collision avoidance is the linear offset along the track.So that is naive, but assuming that would be all that you need, with GPS you would also need the positions of all other trains. But why would you transmit all this information to every train, instead of just computing the collisions in a central node? (That's what is done now.) A better fit for what you suggest would be radar, and this does exist. [1] But that's where your original assumption is naive. You regularly pass other trains within <2m at high speeds, so linear offset is not all you need.<pre><code> [1] https://www.dlr.de/en/kn/research-transfer/projects/next-generation-train/rcas-railway-collision-avoidance-system</code></pre>
 - giovannibajo137 minutes ago
 Would that work in tunnels and forests too?
 - swiftcoder22 minutes ago
 > Trains are still not able to assess properly where they are, even using satellites and inside train sensors. Of course there is research on that, but it's still an unsolved problemThrowing up our hands about how hard a problem this is seems like a ridiculous position to stake. If we can design self-driving cars, that operate safely in far less controlled environments, we can figure out the linear offset of a large vehicle traveling along a physical rail running along a fixed pre-determined path.
- 17186274401 hour ago
 Sorry, but ordering trains to drive manually after the system locks itself down, is the proper procedure. Of course you are still supposed to only send trains to free sections, but the error is in that step, not that they ordered a train to drive on it's own.Also the fallback procedure is also aided by automatic systems and a sizable number of accidents in the past were caused by that information being faulty.
 - julik52 minutes ago
 It is the proper procedure, and it does come (in a lot of countries, AFAIK) with a lot of guardrails:There will be a so-called "train order" allowing passage of a specific section ignoring the safety system warnings, which has strict validity limits both in time and in the area where it applies, usually denoted by specific hectometric milepostsWhen cab signaling is involved (LZB is one of these) and it malfunctions, the entire system normally changes to "driving on sight only" - which indeed limits the train to 40, 30, 20, sometimes - 15 km/h (see <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche_%C3%A0_vue" rel="nofollow">https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marche_%C3%A0_vue</a>) or the line gets switched to lineside signaling - if it is available.I don't know how you could violate all of those rules - both from the driver's side and from the traffic control side - but it sounds absolutely horrible. Like an override of at least 2 (if not 3) very explicit safety margins.
 - AdrianCX51 minutes ago
 Why is that?I remember a long time ago I was stuck in a train in a field a considerable time because of a similar failure and conductor just wouldn't move unless greenI was expecting the same here, conductor is the first to die so just refuse until the idiots fix their system
 - 171862744040 minutes ago
 > Why is that?What exactly?A conductor always just gets a movement order. They are not able to assess whether the track is clear, that's the reason why the signalling system exists in the first place. How they get that movement order doesn't necessarily tell what the security steps were to back it.Of course an attentive conductor can notice and mention there something being weird ("Doesn't the other train normally arrive first?"), but that's a rare lucky occasion, nothing to be relied on. And they just need to swallow the answer ("No, you go first today...") anyway.> and conductor just wouldn't move unless greenThe conductor won't ever move unless they get a movement authority, which most of the time is a green signal.
 - AdrianCX36 minutes ago
 so in this case, couldnt conductor just say - make it green, not my problem, staying still until then
 171862744030 minutes ago
 Why would they trust "a random blinking green light", but not a written and stamped order? Yes, they could do that (and sometimes it will actually prevent an accident), but it will be more being a snowflake, then being a decision for safety. A conductor is simply not responsible for whether it's safe to drive on a given track. Their equivalent is not a car driver.
 AdrianCX27 minutes ago
 The "random blinking green light" is generally more reliableBeing a snowflake here has 2 benefits:1. Getting company managing tracks to fix the lights (they need to deal with angry customers and pay off damages for delays and more), so there's a direct path from unreliable lights to economic damage.2. Avoid crashing and killing yourself and passengers on the offchance the person on the radio is a moron
 17186274405 minutes ago
 > The "random blinking green light" is generally more reliableYes, but not because of the light itself, but due to the safety steps done before. Which should also have happened before the movement order in any other form.As a train driver, you do not have the information required to distinguish these situations. If drivers simple refuse all movement orders, besides "green lights", running trains will become a rare occasion and the drivers will simply get fired for not doing their job. *The train driver is not the one who decides where a train goes.* For this safety-relevant decision a driver is (roughly speaking) nothing more than an innocent bystander.You can think of a train driver more of the person who makes sure the automatic engine works correctly and also has an eye, that nothing weird happens. Most of your train driver education is knowing how the train works and how to get a broken train back working fast. In addition you also learn the safety protocols how you get the information in which state the engine should operate in. This is what train signals are, it's not really the equivalent of a green traffic light for car traffic.
 - _trampeltier1 hour ago
 Yes, but just with max. 40km/h
 - 171862744050 minutes ago
 Depends. For example German Zs1 (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_signals_in_Germany#Zs1_Ersatzsignal" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_signals_in_Germany#Zs1...</a>) would give them the full clear outside of stations.
 - wafflemaker1 hour ago
 So that's why my train slowed to 40kmph when the Norwegian Telecom died for a few hours 3 weeks ago.
 - _trampeltier52 minutes ago
 Yes, 40km/h is for driving on sight in most Europa. I think in France it's even 30km/h.
Yokolos1 hour ago
So based on this, the safest place to sit is presumably the middle carriage?
- 171862744026 minutes ago
 That has been true in the last century, but now the classic collisions are way rarer. See <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster</a> .I would actually sit in front now. Sometimes you would be able to still get vital information and being actually able to act. But the safe decision would be no to enter the train.
- comrade123439 minutes ago
 That's where the bus hits you.
ktallett2 hours ago
I can't imagine what every passenger who survived and the families of those who passed are going through. Such a catastrophic incident with multiple human failures is so tragic and so needless. From the controller to the driver, every single one of them should have said hey we shouldn't just ignore a signal and should investigate why it's on first. For this to be such a quick decision suggests it's not a one off. I would be extremely interested to see how many near misses or ignored signals there has been across Spain. The crash earlier this year was due to inexperienced workers and it seems as if significant training improvements and protocols are needed.
- bigDinosaur1 hour ago
 To have had this many incidents compared to other HSR networks around the world gives all the signs of a classic case of normalisation of deviance.Sadly we'll probably watch a lot of individuals being blamed/scapegoated for systemic issues, but hopefully even Spanish politics can organise a proper investigation after this many deaths in a single year.
- jplrssn1 hour ago
 If as a driver you get told by the control centre to get the train moving again at maximum line speed, surely you should be able to trust that it is safe to do so?I don't see how this would fall on the drivers at all.
 - crote41 minutes ago
 Trust but verify. You wouldn't drive your car into a lake just because your satnav tells you to, would you?As we also know from the aviation industry, controllers are human and therefore will make mistakes. A controller shouldn't issue a wrong order, but a driver also shouldn't accept an order they aren't certain about, and there should be technical systems backing both sides of that up.It doesn't "fall" on the driver, but it doesn't "fall" solely on the controller either. It's a systemic issue, and many pieces have to fail for a disaster to happen.
 - gpvos1 hour ago
 My thoughts as well. It appears that such signal failures happen so often that the controllers regularly let trains run through red under verbal authorization. I don't know the exact protocols, but I would expect a driver to ask for confirmation, as happened here, and then trust the control centre. However, there is clearly a huge systemic problem, with added complexity for the controllers, and there should at least be double checks in the control centre.
- 17186274401 hour ago
 > From the controller to the driver, every single one of them should have said hey we shouldn't just ignore a signalA train driver has zero insight in what is going on and where other trains are. They do need to trust the orders they get, if you want to question every order you will never start to drive.
 - AdrianCX43 minutes ago
 The train driver's job is to say: "it's red, I'm no moving, not my problem, you make it green if you want me to go"That's why it's a union jobAlso he's the first person to die on accident so it's that and the safety of everyone elseThey do not 'need' to follow others, they just need to refuse unless all safe and green.If they never start to drive it's the companies problem to deal with angry non-dead customers
 - stevage24 minutes ago
 That is not how the procedures work, so the driver would be fired as soon as they did that.Every train network has situations where drivers are authorised to proceed against a red signal. Not usually at full speed though.
 - AdrianCX15 minutes ago
 They wouldn't get fired. They are protected both in the US and Spain.At most face unlikely discipline.Here they would even have valid reason to refuse - order was given for full speed, regulation says low speed ready to stop.So a "No, i'm not doing that, you're moron" would be justified.
- dutchbart1 hour ago
 The even more insane thing to me is that the controller knew that there was another train in that block, knowing it was no signal failure. The driving train should’ve never been commanded to continue on full speed by the controller.
 - cedws1 hour ago
 Trains shouldn’t even be manually driven in 2026. We have self driving cars now which is a way harder problem to solve. Relying on a system of signals and driver attentiveness is archaic.
 - delta_p_delta_x1 hour ago
 > Trains shouldn’t even be manually driven in 2026Potentially, but the point is that signallers should physically be unable to allow trains to proceed, and drivers should physically not be able to override them. British signalling from the 1800s has physical interlocks; this isn't a matter of manual versus automatic train operation. It is clearly systemic.
 - dns_snek13 minutes ago
 Driving a train and driving a car are two completely different challenges.If signaling worked properly then it wouldn't matter whether the train was driven autonomously or not, the "problem" becomes trivial. Establishing and continuously verifying that signaling is working properly is the hard part.Without signaling you're limited to crawling speed just like humans are when they don't have any signalling .
 - 171862744055 minutes ago
 We do not have self-driving cars in all environments that clear the necessary security regulation! Also the socially accepted number of deaths due to trains is way below that for cars. The current accident is just a Tuesday for car traffic. (Spain recorded 1785 road deaths in 2024[1], that's 4.9 per day) Detecting objects (and future objects!) on a train track is still a hard problem.The current system is basically that the train is driven both automatically and by a professional attentive driver at the same time. Changing it to just the automatic system is going to reduce safety. Also the real world is way to messy to reach acceptable availability rates with only automatic systems.[1] <a href="https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/spain-road-safety.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/spain-road-safe...</a>
 - fn-mote30 minutes ago
 > Detecting objects (and future objects!) on a train track is still a hard problem.In this case the “object” was another train. That’s not the “hard” part of the problem. This sounds like an apologist comment.
schnitzelstoat1 hour ago
It's incredible the minister didn't resign after the January crash and I doubt he will now either. I understand that perhaps the problem started in the control centre but surely at the end of the day the minister is responsible - they don't get paid a fortune just to pass the blame on to the workers.
- agarsev1 hour ago
 I fail to see how the two accidents, which seem to have very "down to earth" explanations (maintenance failure by workers, protocol override by operators) are being assumed to be a political responsibility so quickly by some and asking for the minister resignation. Now, two in a row seem to point to systemic issues. Is this responsibility of Adif or Renfe? maybe those state companies have to be thoroughly revised. is it due to lack of funding? maybe taxes should be raised, or money diverted from somewhere else (though seeing the spanish budget, it's hard to tell where from, both teachers and doctors are currently protesting for lack of funding). Maybe it is, in the end, a political directive that should have responsibilities declared in the executive. But seeing so many interested parties jumping to that conclusion literally hours after the crash means it's not done out of any reasoning but political animosity
 - Xenoamorphous1 hour ago
 > are being assumed to be a political responsibility so quickly by some and asking for the minister resignationIt sucks but that's how it is over here. It's "my" party the one in power when a catastrophe like this happens? It's not the politicians, it's someone else. Is it the "other" party? Surely the politicians are ultimately responsible.This reflects on the news media as well.
- Xenoamorphous1 hour ago
 > they don't get paid a fortuneSalary for ministers is around 80k euro per year. Yes significantly more than the minimum salary but hardly a fortune.