Spain's transport chief says a deadly rail collision near Toledo appears to trace back to a baffling human error. Transportation Minister Óscar Puente on Thursday laid out a preliminary timeline of the crash, saying a computer failure shut down an automatic safety system along a 39-mile stretch, forcing six trains to halt while a control center in Madrid took over. At 8:36 a.m., controllers with Adif, the state rail infrastructure manager, told one high-speed train to resume normal speed "despite there being another train ahead of it," Puente said, calling it an "inexplicable" decision, per the New York Times. That front train apparently did not move though Puente says it's believed it was given instructions to do so, and was then struck from behind around 8:53am.
Euronews reports Puente added that the moving train was told to run as normal but should have been told to follow the "marcha a la vista" procedure, in which trains run at reduced speed so that drivers have time to stop if they see an obstacle ahead. A modernization effort is already underway to replace the faulty LZB system—which dates to the 1960s—with a more current European Rail Traffic Management System. The BBC reports Spanish trade union CSIF has called for Puente to resign, accusing him of "scapegoating" a traffic manager rather than take responsibility for the crash, "despite the initial computer system failure that triggered the events."
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