Railway accidents

Citation

(2007), "Railway accidents", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dpm.2007.07316aac.003

Railway accidents

17 August 2005 Raniteville, South Carolina, United States

A federal judge approved a class-action settlement today for damages from a January train crash that killed nine people in Graniteville. The settlement outlines how residents and businesses should be reimbursed for property damages and lost wages and profits after a Norfolk Southern train crashed into parked railroad cars. Under the settlement, the railroad will pay $2,000 per household, as well as $200 a day per person in the household for the time they were evacuated. A family of five with no major illnesses that was evacuated for 13 days would receive $15,000 in addition to property damages and other losses. Those who sought medical treatment within three days of the disaster were advised to opt out of the per-day payments, and those cases will be resolved later. Attorneys for residents and the railroad disagreed about whether punitive damages should be awarded. Both sides said the court would hear the issue at a later time. While no estimate of the cost of today’s settlement was available, the railroad has said it expects to spend $35 million for clean-up costs, legal claims and all other expenses from the wreck. Norfolk Southern spokesman Bob Wells said the railroad had settled one wrongful death case, but he wouldn’t give the amount of the settlement.

7 September 2005 Amagasaki, Japan

An interim report on the deadly 25 April crash of a speeding commuter train on West Japan Railway Co’s Fukuchiyama Line touches on the driver’s apparent erratic behaviour but leaves many questions unanswered. The report by the Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission probing the derailment in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, was submitted yesterday to Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Kazuo Kitagawa. Its main conclusion is that speeding on the part of driver Ryujiro Takami, 23, caused the seven-car rapid service train to jump the tracks on a tight, 304 metreradius curve and slam into a nine storey condominium building, killing himself and 106 passengers and leaving 555 people injured. Officials of the commission said, however, they still had a long way to go before they could determine precisely why Takami failed to slow for the curve. It was widely reported that Takami was speeding to make up for lost time for fear of being punished by JR West but commission officials claimed they need more time to study the crash from an objective perspective. In the report, the commission said the rush-hour train was running at more than 110 kph – well above the 70 kph speed limit for that section of track – as it entered the sharp bend. According to data from the automatic train system, Takami applied the regular brakes only after the train entered the curve and never activated the emergency brakes. This has baffled experts, because drivers should instinctively sense a speeding danger and apply the brakes accordingly. Kozo Amano, a professor emeritus majoring in traffic engineering at Kyoto University, said drivers normally should start applying the regular brakes at least 300 to 400 meters before the curve to lower the speed to 70 kph. “It is conceivable that the driver was in an altered state,” or was unconscious and unable to apply the brakes, Amano said. The train had overrun the platform at Itami Station, an earlier stop, by 70 metres, prompting speculation that Takami ran faster to make up for the time lost there, which reportedly amounted to 80 seconds. According to the report, Takami was involved in a 100-metre platform overrun at another station in June 2004.