Twenty-five people have been killed after two passenger trains collided head-on in southern Italy yesterday.
The two trains were on a single-track line going between the coastal towns of Bari and Barletta.
Reports from the region of Puglia say it is unclear why the collision happened. A prosecutor in nearby Trani said it was too early to speculate on the cause, but it was likely that human error was a factor.
The four-carriage trains were both reported to have been travelling at high speed, and some of the carriages were so badly damaged in the collision that there was little left but debris.
Mayor of Corato – where one of the trains was travelling from – said the damage was so extensive it was as if a plane had crashed.
The local authorities have appealed for blood donors to come forward
About 200 people were involved in the rescue operation working in temperatures up to 40C.
This is the second head-on collision to have taken place this year. In February, two trains collided in Bavaria, southern Germany, killing 11 people. Prosecutors attributed the collision to human error on the part of a train controller.
An accident like that requires for sure some human error, or several (an error chain). Almost all accidents do.
However, if a single human error can cause such damage, we face a process design failure.
There should be controls in place to prevent that error, or at least to provide timely alerts and mitigate the consequences.
Moreover, if the spotlights goes to “Who is to blame?” the real causes (root causes) will never be discovered, least removed.
This a case for root cause accident analysis.