TRA was saying that they didn’t know why the truck driver was there either. They had already informed them that all work would be suspended during the holiday.
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When terrible things involving one company keep occurring, you are dealing with a pattern, not repetition of the exact same crises, but a pattern. I think you and @hannes are being (to put it politely) too kind to the TRA.
Guy
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Yup. Just today I saw a Porsche drafting a construction vehicle. Imagine what would have happened if the truck suddenly braked…
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A simple rock under the tires might have prevented this.
Very unfortunate.
Whatever happens, or rather, happened, the news is all over the world.
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Maybe. There’s a lot of variables there, but I’m not denying that. I’m just looking at what happened here. If a meteor crashed down and hit one of their trains, we wouldn’t say it was because of their horrible record. You have to look at the details of each case. And you may well be right.
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Yea, timing was just too perfect.
Well the truck didn’t necessarily roll down at the exact time the train passed. It could have rolled down and been sitting there for minutes before.
We just don’t know. Maybe never will.
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If you want to play the blame game, all evidence points at the TRA, but I’m also in agreement where, for the lack of better words, shit happens.
As of the time of this post, we really don’t know if the truck driver was at fault or there was a mechanical failure in the truck. I think everyone can agree that a barrier on that road could’ve saved the 50+ lives that have been lost.
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And there are no cameras or some way to detect obstruction? There’s a curve leading up to the tunnel meaning there is no way the train driver would be able to stop in time if there was an obstruction.
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true, still wonder if the truck would have been stuck in the tracks or if the momentum would have cleared it completely to the other side
I looked and the US has a train accident almost every year, Japan also has them.
I’m not sure if Taiwan has a higher rate since I don’t have time to break down by how many trains travel/population/etc.
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Most of its momentum was downward so it would have crashed into the track bed mostly.
You have to look at population, ridership on a yearly/month/weekly basis and amount of track laid down. All of these numbers, without even checking, are greater than Taiwan mostly due to the first factor, more people.
Right, it seems to me that train accidents just happen. It’s hard to say if Taiwan has a serious problem just by looking at it.
Could Taiwan make improvements, no doubt.
I don’t really think there is. It’s just that this one and the last one have been particularly deadly so people’s memories are fresh. In the 2000s there were a couple where few people died and then the really bad one before that was in 1991.
Train derailment has been used before as part of a murder plot:
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Yeah, it’s hard to judge these things. It’s like people using 1 bad storm as evidence of climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t real, just using single events to judge is not very useful.
I think the death toll of this one is particularly bad because it happened in a tunnel. It’s just really unlucky that the truck collided at that particular moment.
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Yeah, right out of a Final Destination movie. What are the chances of it rolling right into it at that moment.
Slim.
More likely the truck had already rolled down and was sitting there for who knows how long when the train came round the bend.
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