Spain rail crash came after train ordered to go in error: minister

Teams are working around the clock, trying to understand the cause of Spain's fatal train crash. It all appears to have happened in a matter of minutes. At half past eight on Wednesday morning, a computer malfunction led all six trains on a 63-kilometre stretch of track to come to a halt. This is part of a security measure. Six minutes later, an employee from a control centre gave them the go-ahead to start running again. The operators in the control center decided that the service should resume, which from our point of view is inexplicable. Despite a red light, the driver of a high-speed train belonging to state-owned company Renfe was told to get going again at normal speed, while another train remained stopped on the tracks 25 kilometers ahead. I was in the third carriage. We stopped for around 20 minutes before the accident. They told us through the loudspeakers that service had been slowed. At 8.48, employees on the halted train warned the control centre that a technical error prevented them from moving. Word wasn't passed on to the upcoming train, which, five minutes later, collided with it at a speed of up to 200 kilometres per hour. Trains need a lot of distance to come to a halt. At 300 kilometers an hour, they need three kilometers. At 160 kilometers an hour, it's almost a kilometer. At these speeds, the human eye can't see these distances properly. The control center operator is currently being heard by investigators.