The former Transport Minister is jailed because of corruption in public contracts, and hiring prostitutes[3][4].
The government is doing a poor job maintaining the current railway network.
[1]: https://www.eldebate.com/espana/madrid/20251119/cercanias-ma...
[2]: https://www.vozpopuli.com/espana/tren-accidentado-renfe-reco...
[3]: https://www.infobae.com/espana/2025/12/23/adif-altero-puntua...
[4]: https://www.elespanol.com/espana/tribunales/20250412/koldo-e...
So I would standby for this tragedy to be used for political purposes to try and get foreign operators banned from Spanish tracks, regardless of the facts of the matter.
This is an ignorant opinion. For multiple reasons.
Derailing under these circumstances is a track issue, which means ADIF, the state's infrastructure maintainer, is under suspicion. Not operators, the state's infrastructure maintainer.
Liberalization of the railway sector is an EU-wide mandate. It's not some whimsical slip of a single country's leadership.
Years ago there was an AVE derailment in Santiago de Compostela. No one banned RENFE from the lines.
There are a lot of safety lessons embedded in these videos, which is why I like them. I also did a double take when I heard "semaphore"; its history goes back far longer than the ~century of software engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore
Also hope you’re doing well it’s been a minute since our paths crossed on gdnet.
The Italians designed it but won't run it at more than 300km/h in Italy citing local infrastructure concerns. I guess that leaves other countries to find the edge cases. I'll be interested to find out how fast it was going during the crash.
The defect was not caught by the manufacturer or the system operator. It was due to two crossed wires in an assembly.
I know a lot more engineering goes into these trains due to the higher stakes. Japan’s high speed rail hasn’t had a fatal accident in 60 years. I’m wondering what the cause of this will turn out to be.
I don't have data but I would imagine crashes on these high speed lines (which always seem to be run at a higher level of professionalism than the general networks) are rarest of all.
I don't think it's a good use of mental energy to plan for a crash like this. You're better off using your brain cycles on hygiene or not losing your luggage.
In France and Japan, HSR has had zero fatalities in the entire period of operation.
In China, HSR had AFAIR one fatal crash, with 40 fatalities. Per passenger-mile, Chinese HSR is twice as safe as US air travel.
At first, when seeing it was in 2015 I was extremely surprised I didn't heard about it at the time. Then I saw the date: Nov 14th 2015, just the day after the ISIS terror attacks in Paris, France's 9/11. Of course we barely heard about a train crash at that time…
Most railway deaths in the EU are due to unauthorized people on the tracks or due to crossings. The actual number of passengers deaths has been really low in the past years.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
In the EU it's safer than flying, with 0.5 deaths per 100 billion km/ passenger vs 3 deaths per 100 billion kms/ passenger. However, since an airplane flies at, let's say, six times the average speed of a train, the actual probability of dying during a 1-hour trip is almost 40 times more on a plane than on a train.
> I would imagine crashes on these high speed lines (which always seem to be run at a higher level of professionalism than the general networks) are rarest of all
If this crash is anything like the other ones, you might be surprised. Safety complacency tends to cause maintenance failures. Plus the low speed lines are less deadly since the total energy is proportional to velocity squared, and v is low.
In other words, it might be more helpful to look at it as "if they’re run at a higher level of standards, it’s because they have to be".
Statistically you’re probably right, but considering how many brain cycles we waste on non-essentials, it’s just as fun to waste them on this. That way you can start a nerdy conversation with your travel companions, and they can learn to travel without you next time.
Sure they are.
> Besides, you’ll get to feel a nice jolt of serotonin when you remember to sit backwards.
I can also get that by remembering that I'm conquering a superstition and fitting my behavior closer to real risks.
However, there were a number of problems - people didn't like sitting in them, people didn't like hearing that their seat wasn't as safe as the others, you can't get as many rows in unless you turn them all backwards, and the structure needs to be designed differently so then you need more spares.
(edit: I guess it's more of no-brainer on a train/bus where you don't have a seat belt)
But it's really theoretical, and does not account for the passenger in front of you headed head-first into your throat.
PS: I laughed hard that xlbuttplug2 is answering to deadbabe. The internet lives!
Are you one of the safety engineers? Have you discovered anything which isn't included in normal safety tests which should be?
But of course you're not wrong, trains are vastly safer than private cars. If anyone uses this as evidence against having a proper rail system, they're ignorant.
But - until someone does that, there's no reason to make this about the US or cars vs. trains. It's borderline offensive to reflexively politicize this before anyone else had; it almost feels like you're intentionally trying to sow conflict, here.
0. Per 2024 stats from the NHTSA (https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-estimates-39345-t...)
Like I said, a pretty bad day.
Yes, a single car crash killing 150 people would make the news. It would be among the worst, if not the single worst, car accident of all time [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-vehicle_collision
This is now how I interpreted "bad day", think it would be clearer to remove "day" if that's what you meant. Of course you're right in that it would be awful as a car accident, they simply don't happen that many as a time. Which is why our monkey brain's lack of emotional response to "many small cuts" vs "one big cut" incorrectly causes the belief that cars and e.g. coal/gas are much safer than they are.
Did anyone say that? This conversation was mostly about newsworthiness.
In Europe, trains are 28 times safer than cars (fatalities per passenger-km).
We already know Americans can't drive but with trains like... how do you mess up a straight line?
One thing I learned working on a system that did train positioning for the 7 Line subway in NYC is that train systems are a lot more complicated than just straight lines. They are complicated networks with custom signaling and the trains don't necessarily travel on the usual side in the usual direction at all times.
That said, in this particular case it basically was just two straight lines side by side and one of the trains derailed and travelled into the path of the other track.
Trains don't often derail on straight sections, likely either someone fucked up really bad on rail maintenance or someone sabotaged the rail.
https://usafacts.org/articles/are-train-derailments-becoming...
> In 2024, there were 1,507 significant railway accidents in the EU, with a total of 750 people killed and 548 seriously injured.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
The GGP has quoted the derailments figure from the USA page, but the total accidents (including trespassers and level crossing accidents) for the EU.
The EU page they cite says there were 63 derailments in 2024.
A derailment in Europe tends to make the news even when there are no injuries.
This single accident has killed more train passengers in Spain than were killed in the whole EU in 2024 (16).
a high-speed train travelling from Malaga to Madrid derailed and crossed over onto another track
How in the cause and effect sense, not which direction it went.