The current government has been found to be cutting corners in maintaining the Cercanías commuter railway network[1]. Indeed last year some machinists had to derail a train to stop it from crashing other[2].
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.
For many years the Spanish state-owned company RENFE had a monopoly on Spain's huge high speed rail network. However their high prices, inconvenient schedules and poor customer service were often criticized, and so when, to the annoyance of RENFE and many spanish politicians, additional foreign operators entered the market on the key Madrid - Barcelona route, ridership doubled whilst ticket prices halved.
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.
Foreign operators are mandated by the EU, they can't be banned. Spain has been one of the first countries to allow foreign high speed operators (unlike other European countries that did attempt to delay their entrance as much as possible
Unless there is evidence that the accident was caused by the Iryo train, I wouldn’t be so fast to blame the private companies on a decaying infrastructure.
There are plenty of cases of lack of maintenance in the railway network.
> So I would standby for this tragedy to be used for political purposes
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.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, look up plainly difficult on youtube. He has more videos on train crashes than I’ve seen, and I’m embarrassed how many I’ve seen. Here’s one to get you started: https://youtu.be/VV2rIHEp5AM?si=sSBT9s49PqbLTGbt
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
Oh you silly duck! Semafor is a common word in a handful of other languages for things like traffic lights and such. I had to do a double take when I first saw it in a programming class.
Also hope you’re doing well it’s been a minute since our paths crossed on gdnet.
For a bit of context according to the OECD 2023 Spain had ~1800 on the road during the previous year, so that's about 5/day. There are more deaths on the road in Spain in a couple of weeks than this tragic accident. Either way it's too many deaths obviously but I want to highlight what a freak event this is compared to a more popular mode of transportation.
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.
AnsaldoBreda did also manufacture the Fyra trains for the short-lived high-speed trains here in The Netherlands. After three trains lost parts in the first month, it was banned from operations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyra
Looks like a Frecciarossa 1000 derailed in 2020 but it was due to a manufacturer defect in a track switch replaced the night before.
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.
Actually the defect was detected by the operators, who installed it that night. They disabled the switch, but apparently this didn't reach the day shift.
Train crashes like this are _so_ rare. It's not as safe as flying but AFAICT in rich countries it's the same rough order of magnitude in terms of danger level.
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.
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…
I remember this day because I worked in a company that made software for train networks.
It did briefly made the news but not for long due to the terror attacks and also there wasn’t any passenger on this train, it was a train testing.
In fact the story is even more tragic when you know that the day before, they also were too fast in the same turn and in the records you hear something like « few, that was close, better take care next time ».
However, for sure this crash should have never happened but it only happened because they were testing the limits of both the train and the track.
It’s literally like a test pilot crashing an airplane while testing all the limits : it should never happen but they are still there for it not to happen in commercial flights.
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.
Brain cycles aren’t a limited supply. Besides, you’ll get to feel a nice jolt of serotonin when you remember to sit backwards.
> 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.
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 feel like airplanes should be designed this way. Outside of takeoff and landing it would be pretty hard to even notice the difference, once you're seated.
At least BEA airliners used to have quite a few backward facing seats, up to half the plane.
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.
Huh. I'd never thought of this. If that is actually meaningfully beneficial, I wonder if they'd design self driving cars with the seats facing backwards, given there's no longer a necessity to look at the road.
(edit: I guess it's more of no-brainer on a train/bus where you don't have a seat belt)
Not the author, but I think there was some research and it's indeed better for you if you have head support, to be facing back towards the front. If prevents a whole range of injuries, from your neck, to becoming a projectile yourself.
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!
Consider the "booth seats" in trains and busses. So people can chat etc facing each other. If you've got a waymo with your friends why wouldn't you want the seats facing each other so you can be social, excluding this safety factor.
Infant car seats face backwards, they recommend backwards facing for a long as possible (until the kid is too big to fit comfortably in a backwards facing position).
It's incredibly beneficial. However many people dislike it and want to be facing the direction they are moving in, so best case is probably a train-style 4-seater. Which 2 seats facing forward and 2 backwards.
Please don't post like this on HN. This kind of comment is a generic tangent (and a rather ghoulish one), that can be made about any tragedy; yes, no matter how bad something is, there's always something worse. It's the fact that this is an unusual occurrence that makes it noteworthy. The guidelines ask us to converse curiously and avoid generic tangents and shallow dismissals. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
FWIW: a single car crash killing 21 people would still be newsworthy in America. And I think if you math it out with something per capita equivalent, this would actually be an exceptionally bad day/incident for the US.
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.
Right, so, mathing it out, the US has a population of around 340 million but Spain has a population of around 49 million. 340/49 is roughly 7, so the per capita equivalent in the US would be a single incident killing 21*7=147 people. So that'd be one incident killing 1.5x the average number of people usually killed across the rest of the country combined.
A completely unremarkable day, more like it. Given stochasticity there's bound to be at least a dozen days per year with 50% more than the average, especially since car deaths depend a lot on weekday, holidays, weather and so on - much moreso than train deaths. No one would look up from it, wouldn't make the news.
> And I think if you math it out with something per capita equivalent, this would actually be an exceptionally bad day/incident for the US.
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.
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.
The bulk of those are accidents involving railway crossings. There is a program to get rid of all level crossings in NL but it will take a lot of time and cost a ton of money. But there really is no way in which you can make a level crossing safe in combination with normal train speeds.
American trains are largely freight travelling long rural distances. You didn't mention it, so I presume because you didn't take it into account, so your statistics sound to me like they don't mean anything comparable.
Derailments are common is what the stats show. US derailments are largely property damage as they are freight centric, while in Europe, passenger deaths are higher due to more heavy passenger utilization. Derailment is hard to defend against.
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.
There are plenty of cases of lack of maintenance in the railway network.
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.
For a bit of context according to the OECD 2023 Spain had ~1800 on the road during the previous year, so that's about 5/day. There are more deaths on the road in Spain in a couple of weeks than this tragic accident. Either way it's too many deaths obviously but I want to highlight what a freak event this is compared to a more popular mode of transportation.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckwersheim_derailment
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…
It did briefly made the news but not for long due to the terror attacks and also there wasn’t any passenger on this train, it was a train testing.
In fact the story is even more tragic when you know that the day before, they also were too fast in the same turn and in the records you hear something like « few, that was close, better take care next time ».
However, for sure this crash should have never happened but it only happened because they were testing the limits of both the train and the track.
It’s literally like a test pilot crashing an airplane while testing all the limits : it should never happen but they are still there for it not to happen in commercial flights.
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...
> 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.
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.
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...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailment
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.