JR West Boss cleared over Amagasaki

[JamieLei]

BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16501417
Japan Times: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120111x1.html

Caused by a speeding train attempting to make up less than a minute of late-running in Amagasaki, a suburb of Osaka, in 2005. The crash killed 107 and still many Japanese refuse to travel in the front coach of a train.

It is amazing that trains arrive to the second, and I once overheard a trainee guard being bollocked quite majorly by his trainer because our local train was running 40 seconds late. But in the end safety must come before punctuality, or else we get accidents like this and what happened in China last year.

[Kevo00]

I know its in no way comparable to reality, but I always found the tight curve radii and steep inclines in the Japanese routes in MSTS to be very tricky, and its clear that Japanese train drivers must drive with precision. Tight curves and excess speeds don't go well together. I'd imagine that in the UK a driver that went over line speed to make up lost time would face disciplinary measures.

On the China subject it looks as if the lessons of last year's crash are not being learned, and yet faster trains are being built.

[61653]

The idea of a 40 second delay being such an issue is so divorced from the culture in the UK. I have it on good authority that prior to OTMR 'black boxes' being fitted, drivers were known to hit over 90mph (maybe on a downhill!) in 142s, but I don't think that was part of a timekeeping exercise!