Amagasaki rail crash
The Amagasaki rail crash occurred on 25 April, 2005 at around 9:18 local time (0:18 UTC), just after the local rush hour. The Rapid Service bound for Dōshisha-mae on the Gakkentoshi Line (a seven-car commuter train) came off the tracks on the JR West Fukuchiyama Line (JR Takarazuka Line) in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, near Osaka, just before Amagasaki Station, and the front two carriages rammed into an apartment building. The first carriage slid into the first floor parking garage and as a result took days to remove. Of the roughly 700 passengers (initial estimate was 580 passengers) on board at the time of the crash, 106 passengers, in addition to the driver, were killed and 555 others injured. Most passengers and bystanders have said that the train appeared to have been travelling too fast. The incident was Japan's most serious since 1963's Yokohama rail crash where two passenger trains collided with a derailed freight train, killing 162 people.
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Cause
Investigators have focused on speeding by the twenty three year-old driver, Ryūjiro Takami (who is among the dead), as being the most likely cause of the accident. It is claimed that he overshot the last station on the line before the wreck, causing a ninety second delay. Investigators speculate that the driver may have been attempting to make up this lost time by increasing the train's speed beyond customary limits. Many reports from surviving passengers indicate that the train was travelling faster than normal. In mid-2004, the same driver had been reprimanded for overshooting a station by one hundred meters.
The Japanese culture is quite strict when it comes to punctuality, with commuters often depending on near-perfect timing on the part of trains to commute to and from work on time. This is because at stations (including the train's next scheduled stop, Amagasaki Station) trains meet on both sides of the same platform to allow people to transfer between express and local trains running on the same line. As a result a small delay in one train can significantly cascade through the timetable due to the tightness of the schedule. Delays of six seconds on the Shinkansen line are worried about, while in many countries delays of thirty or forty seconds are considered the norm.
Drivers face financial penalties for lateness as well as being forced into harsh and humiliating "training" programs; a few have been fired without pay altogether. At least one other driver committed suicide recently following management harassment and threats of job termination when he made an unscheduled stop for a safety check, the union alleges.
The speed limit on the segment of track where the derailment happened was seventy km/h (43.5 mph). A data recorder in the rear of the train (the rear cars were quite new and equipped with many extra devices) later showed that the train was moving at one hundred km/h (62 mph) at that point, but investigators estimate that the train would have had to be going approximately twice the speed limit (140 km/h or 87 mph) to spontaneously derail, which is faster than the carriages were capable of propelling themselves. At least one report has suggested investigators are examining the possibility there were stones on the line.
Japanese building codes currently do not regulate the distance between train lines and residential buildings due to high confidence in the engineering of the rail system. Railway lines often pass within a few metres of apartment buildings in metropolitan areas.
Aftermath
Amongst other things, the Ministry of Land and Transportation has asked all railway companies to update their automatic stopping systems so that trains would brake automatically to slow down as they approach sharp curves.
It is believed that a contributing factor in the accident was the JR West's policies of schedule punctuality. As a result of this, Masataka Ide, JR West adviser who played a major role in enforcing the punctuality of the company's trains, announced that he would resign in June 2005 at the company's annual shareholder meeting, with the company's chairman and president resigning in August.
The section where the crash occurred, between Amagasaki and Takarazuka stations, was re-opened for service on June 19, 2005. The speed limits were decreased for the straight and curved rail sections around the accident site, formerly 120 km/h (straight zone) and 70 km/h (curved zone), currently 95 km/h (straight zone) and 60 km/h (curved zone).
There were some people who were praying when the re-opened trains passed near the building where the accident occurred. One passenger said, "I like having a quick train, but JR needs more safety to make passengers secure. JR have to make sure of the train safety."
According to the investigations carried out by the Hyogo Prefecture police, out of the 107 deaths, at least forty three (twenty seven men, sixteen women), including the driver, were in the first car, at least forty five (22 men, twenty three women) were in the second car and at least one was in the third car. This information was determined by questioning 519 of the approximately 550 injured passengers. As of September 1, 2005, fourteen of the injured remain in hospital, including one woman still in critical condition.
On December 26 2005, Takeshi Kakiuchi officially resigned from the presidency of JR West in a move that is intended to take responsibility for the accident. Kakiuchi's successor will be Masao Yamazaki, who had previously served as the railway's vice president, based in Osaka. While Kakiuchi's resignation comes a day after another serious accident on JR East, officials at the railway have not made any explicit connection between the recent accident and this resignation.
Similar accidents
Too fast around sharp curve
- Malbone Street Wreck, 1918 in New York - 98 people killed - too fast around sharp curve.
- Salisbury rail crash, 1906 - 28 killed - too fast around sharp curve
- Sutton Coldfield train disaster - 17 killed - too fast around sharp curve.
- Camp Mountain train disaster, 1947 - 16 killed - too fast (40 miles per hour) around 20mph curve
- Bruehl train disaster, 2000 - 9 killed - too fast at a turnout in a construction zone at Bruehl station, Germany.
- Waterfall train disaster, 2003 - 7 killed - too fast around sharp curve.
- Morpeth rail crashes - 6 killed - too fast around sharp curve
Failure to implement Stop and Examine
- Eschede train disaster - 101 killed - conductor refuses to stop train when passenger reports object (broken wheel tyre) bursting through floor.
See also
References
- (April 25 2005). Japanese train crash kills dozens. BBC.
- (April 26 2005). Japan begins train crash investigation. Sydney Morning Herald.
- (April 26 2005). Death toll rises in Japan crash. Los Angeles Times.
- (April 27 2005). Japan rail crash toll tops 100. BBC.
- (April 28, 2005). International Herald Tribune, pq 1;8.
- (May 14 2005), Rail crash exposes cracks in a society under strain. Sydney Morning Herald.
- (May 18, 2005). Japanese executives to resign over commuter-train derailment. Trains News Wire. Retrieved May 19, 2005.
- (December 26 2005). President of West Japan Railway to Resign. Associated Press (reprinted by ABC News). Retrieved December 27 2005.
Categories
Railway accidents in Japan | 2005 disasters | 2005 in rail transport | 2005 in Japan