Safety of Spain's rail system questioned after 2nd fatal crash this year | Hanomansing Live

At least 68 people are dead following a collision between two passenger trains in central Spain. And at least six Canadians are among the dozens of people injured, with one unaccounted for. As CBC's Chris Brown reports, this isn't the only deadly train crash in that country this year. The crash south of Madrid was catastrophic. Both trains were traveling on the same track in the same direction. One was stopped when the other plowed into it. The impact utterly crushed carriages. Others were ripped open, ejecting people into the fields in a mangled mess that left more than 60 dead. First and foremost, we'd like to mourn this terrible tragedy, said Spain's King Felipe. Survivors described the moment of impact. All of a sudden, the train hit us from behind. Suddenly, we saw the train on the left. Everything was overturned. We were having breakfast, having a coffee, and we felt a huge impact. We were all thrown into the air. The country's transportation minister said initially a communications failure triggered a red signal that forced both trains to stop. Inexplicably, said Oscar Puente, the rear train was cleared to proceed through the red light when it wasn't safe to go. Spain's high-speed rail system is a source of immense national pride, but this is the second major deadly accident this year. 46 people were killed in a crash in January. If we need to further strengthen safety to restore confidence in our high-speed rail system, we will do so, said Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. While the rail controller's actions will be a key part of the investigation, this safety expert says a single individual is rarely the only cause of a disaster. The way for Spain and for most railways to come move past their safety or a crash is to look at what went wrong as a system and then try to address those gaps in the system otherwise you're going to have to see a repeat. Spain has declared three days of mourning as anguished families await news about the dozens injured in hospital. Chris Brown, CBC News, London. Okay, I want to bring in someone who is in Spain following the latest developments. Francisco Bethea Romero is a railway certification expert and structural researcher. He's also a mechanical engineering professor at Nebrija University in Madrid, and that's where we've reached him. Francisco, thank you so much for your time. I know it's late where you are. Yes, thank you. Thank you for your invitation. So I know you've been following the news of this crash all day, and I'm sure you have been poring over the details as we know them. But what stands out to you about the collision? Yeah, I've been following it all day. The thing that stands to me the most is that this is something that should have never happened. This is something, if I were to talk to you last week and you proposed this situation to me, I would tell you that it's impossible. knowing from the inside the normatives the safety measures the safety systems and how the system works i would tell you i would have told you there's no way zero possibilities but here we are today and there are some structural issues that took us to this point what we're hearing i think is that technical problems and human error are possibly the cause here does does that surprise you well in the human error part it's a little bit relative the technical issues uh yeah they do surprise me here in europe we're coming this is not a thing in spain the railway system comes from european normatives there there's a framework of working together there's also interoperability so the countries can use the trains in other countries in with the same level of safety the safety is a main thing and it is being heavily regulated heavily established for multiple multiple years and it's probably one of the safest systems in the world the problem it goes to the at the end of the line there is an administration of the infrastructure basically the railways you cannot somebody has to take care of them has to take care of them has to take has has to administrate them. This is the administrator of the infrastructure. In Europe, these companies are state-owned companies. They normally are really big. They need to have a lot of budgets. It's the same as I'm saying, in all of European Union, they are the same. They have the same way of being. And the problem is that in Spain, this company, it's failing. It's making mistakes. It's not being able to provide the level the safety that is needed and that will be needed to address just ten just nine months ago there was that other deadly crash involving high speed trains um you know and these are headlines obviously that are making their way around the world and i think that there are probably canadians with plans to travel in spain on the railways and they may be second guessing those plans right now what's your advice i would be second guessing i would not completely second and getting going on a train right now because at the end of the day, the railway system, this high-speed railway system was one of the most important systems in Spain. It was cheap. It was fast. It moved a lot of population. It was safe. The problem is that at this point, we get in details. What happened then? What happened now? The problem at the bottom line is there is an administrator of the infrastructure that it has to be taking care of the safety and it's clearly not taking care of the safety. You were asking me about the human error. Well, the systems in the European Union for a long time in the railroad system, especially the high-speed train systems, they don't rely on people. They rely on people at a certain level, but you cannot have a driver having this crazy idea of going and crashing into a station at maximum speed because there are a lot of safety systems that will block him from doing that. there is a control system that even if all of the systems that are redundant fail the control system will be able to see and act even if the driver keeps trying to go ahead so this is this doesn't depend this system hasn't been designed yesterday it has been it doesn't depend on one person's decision or somebody doing his job correctly it has all kinds of safety and redundancies that are meant to make it safe and that nothing can fail the problem is that all of those systems have to be implemented and if all of those systems somehow have not been implemented correctly they have they have ways of avoiding them or you can disconnect them where you're not supposed to disconnect them that's that's where we get into right now so what we heard from leadership in your country yeah is that they will do whatever it takes to restore confidence my question to you is what would it take to restore your confidence in the high-speed rail in spain you know safety having a company well also these companies they're as i said state-owned they're not transparent you cannot go and ask questions you cannot go and research what they're doing check verify because they're basically all state-owned so basically they depend on whoever is in the government at that moment so i would say definitely they need to be more transparent at least in spain the same configuration the same style then the same thing happens all over Europe but at the end at the end of the day there haven't been issues in Europe besides Spain and we had two major accidents that come down to structural issues into this administration company. Francisco Bethea Romero, a railway certification expert in Spain. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much.