Editor’s note: A serious traffic accident involving a train collision occurred in Greece on February 28. Most of the casualties were young students. While the whole country of Greece mourned, they also angrily questioned the long-delayed railway safety reform——following the follow-up investigation of the accident In the incident, the station master of Larissa (Larissa) station where the accident occurred admitted his negligence. However, looking at the whole case, the railway infrastructure in Greece is insufficient. Protest voices were repeatedly ignored, and eventually a major tragedy that might have been foreseen occurred.
The author of this article, Wu Zonglin, used two series of articles to review the whole story of the Greek train collision case and its subsequent investigations, examining how and why Greek railway reform was delayed, and whether this traffic accident, one of the most serious in Europe in recent years, might have been avoided in the first place ? Will the occurrence of the accident finally arouse the determination and implementation of reform?
As of March 6, 2023, according to official statistics, the number of victims of the Greek train collision accident has reached 57, 48 were hospitalized, 6 were intubated, and 56 were missing. This has become the deadliest casualty in the country’s official records. traffic accident. The previous record was a train accident in Corinth, southern Peloponnese, in 1968, in which 34 people were killed and 150 injured.
▌Previous summary:
This serious accident occurred near the entrance of a tunnel in the Tempe area of central Greece late at night on February 28, Greek time. It collided with a northbound passenger train and a southbound freight train. Since “collision” has been the most serious situation in railway accidents since the industrialization period, the industry and practitioners generally prevent collisions from the aspects of equipment, driving system and employee training.
After modernization and improvement, train collision accidents in countries all over the world have been greatly reduced, making them the most inappropriate and least likely to occur in the form of railway accidents. Therefore, in addition to caring for the dead and injured passengers, this accident has also aroused the attention of all walks of life on the operation of Greek railways.
▌The incident: the first 12 minutes
From the observation of the train operation status and the site route conditions, there are several doubtful points in the Tempe train collision accident that do not conform to the logic of the general railway traffic system: first, the “Athens-Thessaloniki” ( Athína-Thessaloníki) line is a dual-line section, and the up and down trains should be able to run separately on the line and enter the same section at the same time without intersecting or avoiding.
Secondly, even if the section is a single-track section, the railway traffic system must strictly abide by the “blocking principle” (that is, only one train is allowed to travel in a section). To the train into the section; finally, passenger trains usually have to follow the timetable and have rush pressure, while freight cars have less rush pressure, and the traction capacity of passenger and freight cars is different (that is, the speed of travel is different). Under the usual practice, usually try to avoid arranging passenger and trucks in the same lane.
If the concept of a car is used to describe the accident process, it is like putting the cars going south and north on the same side of the highway at the same time, and let the big truck and the tour bus run the red light at the same time and come on the line with the highest speed limit. Folio. Because there are many doubtful points that do not conform to the common sense of railway traffic, most people from all walks of life speculate that there may be a major equipment failure or improper operation to intervene in the traffic sequence, which will lead to the accident.
After the accident, Greek officials were quick to label the disaster a “tragic human error” and urgently detained the Larissa station master on duty, who initially claimed he had “locked” the train to the correct location. “But the system did not execute his operation correctly”, although the station master later admitted his negligence during the investigation.《CNN》Translated the dispatch radio recording of the station master ordering the driver of the intercity train to cross the dangerous signal (red light) released by the local inspection unit on March 1 before the incident:
Station Master: “Answer, you (referring to the driver of the IC62 intercity passenger train involved in the accident) crossed the red light (departure signal machine) and continued driving until Neoi Poroi entered the station (signal machine)”
Driver: “Vasilis (name of station master), can I drive like this?”
Station Master: “Open! Open!”
Driver: “Understood, good night.”
In the conversation that followed for several minutes, the station master can be heard ordering station attendants to put another train on the same track.
The station master: “No, no, no, 1564 (interval train) will take this one later”
Station staff: “Understood, then I will leave it in the reverse position” (Note: The direction of the point switch can be divided into fixed and reverse positions. Generally speaking, the positioning is to open the direction of the main line, and the reverse position is usually to change the route)
Several key points can be seen from the dialogue records:
1. The station master and the driver jointly drove the train in violation of the signal conditions, and arbitrarily drove the car into the next section when the signal machine was in danger (red light), and there seemed to be no corresponding device on the train to prevent this rash approach Sign behavior.
2. The signal machine at the station is not fully automated and interlocked with the switch device and other driving equipment for opening the road, or some reasons cause the signal display to be inconsistent with the opening direction of the switch device, making it impossible for the station master to control For complete control of the panel, it is necessary to rely on employees to turn the switches on site.
3. The employee asked the station master if he needed to turn back the switch so that the following trains might stop, however, the station master instructed him that the following local trains would follow the same route. Apparently, the station master took it for granted that the passenger trains were on the correct route, but he didn’t know the status of the route ahead, and he didn’t seem to have any information from the neighboring station. The main reason for the route opening.
At around 23:00 local time in Greece, the IC 62 intercity train, which was delayed for 48 minutes, left the tunnel entrance, and the freight train going south was approaching there. In the dark night, the drivers of both sides may not have had time to react to what happened. The headlights of the two trains became the last light seen by each other.
According to a report by the local media “Proto Thema”, the 59-year-old station manager admitted to the operation error and did not actually change the train route following arriving at the case, so that the two trains were running on the same track. He confessed in the transcript that he had given permission for a passenger train to leave the station (albeit under dangerous signals) and then “realized” 12 minutes later that he had made a mistake.
His lawyer, Stefanos Pantzartzidis, said in an interview with a local reporter that his client was arrested within hours of the accident, and “he almost collapsed” when he learned of the casualties of the accident. “He has assumed the responsibilities of his duties. However, what I want to say is that we should not focus on just one tree when there is a forest behind us.” responsibility, but there were other, broader factors that contributed to this tragedy.
The webmaster appeared in court on March 5 local time and was charged with business negligent death and injury.
▌Before the event: a gap of more than ten years
After the accident, Greek Transport and Infrastructure Minister Kostas Karamanlis announced his resignation shortly following a short tour, “in order to take responsibility for the Greek railway system that does not meet 21st century standards”, adding, Over the past three and a half years, the government “has made every effort to ameliorate this fact”, saying in front of the media that his resignation “is a minimum of respect for those who died unjustly… When such a tragedy occurs, it is not It’s possible to treat everything as if it never happened.”
When visiting a hospital where relatives of missing persons gather, Zoe Rapti, Deputy Minister of Health of Greece, told the BBC that the Greek debt crisis in 2010 made it more difficult to invest in the railway system, and the government must take a high-level view on the domestic budget. austerity measures in exchange for financial assistance from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.
Greek government spokesman Giannis Oikonomous told a news conference on the accident that the “prolonged delay” in the railway reform plan was rooted in decades of “distortion” in the country’s public sector. He said the government tried to solve the problem, but “there is no way to eradicate it”.
Although in the past ten years, Greece has successively obtained regarding 700 million US dollars in funds from the European Union to promote domestic modernization, following the accident, the top leaders of the Greek government have jumped out to admit that the investment in the improvement of railway infrastructure is insufficient, and that The caliber unanimously blamed the government’s national debt crisis more than a decade ago.
(Next part to be continued)
Responsible editor / Lai Yun
