China's Train Collision - Japanese Experts Disclose the Main Reasons for China's Train Collision

7.23 Wenzhou train collision

This News come from Japanese:
Natural disaster or man-made calamity?
Two week has passed since the July 23 train collision accident in Wenzhou, China. Newspapers and TV in Japan reported daily, with eye-catching, full-page and special reports, keeping track of new developments.

On August 1, a Japanese TV special report claimed that in recent days, according to certain Japanese railway experts’ analyses, the actual reasons for the Wenzhou’s train collision were disclosed.  

On July 23, professional Japanese railway reporters hurried to the scene as soon as they learned the news of the accident. The crashed train and its surrounding electricity sources were video-recorded. Japanese railway experts then carefully analyzed the videos. To their surprise, they discovered that the electric power system had no lightning protection on the electric poles along the railway. This is completely different from the Japanese Shinkansen (bullet train) in which lightning protection equipment are set atop each of the electric poles. In addition, there was a problem with the control center, which is supposed to keep close watch to monitor the conditions of the entire rail system. The problem: only one man was on duty in the control center that day. Contrarily, the Shinkansen needs 20 operators in the control center to operate the huge, complicated, yet crucial system.      

The Chinese Ministry of Railways also alleged that the accident was caused by a signal-equipment breakdown, and thus red lights turned into green ones. But the Japanese experts ruled out this scenario, because it was impossible for drivers to see stop/go light signals clearly from such a high-speed train, at a speed of more than 200 kilometers per hour. The Shinkansen system has an automatic train control (ACT) device. With this device, a train could automatically brake and stop in cases of electricity shortages or blackouts, or even failures within the ACT system.

Regarding the official explanation of the “control system malfunction caused by a lightning strike”, Mei Yuan-Chun, a reporter for the Chinese Ministry of Railways, disagreed. He said that if the control system broke down, the signaling system would also fail. Furthermore, if the signaling system could not receive and send signals, the train would then automatically stop.

The final verdict for the accident was attributed to severe, faulty railway system design.

The Japanese experts also denounced the authorities for recklessly resuming high-speed-rail service only 38 hours after the accident, without investigation and searching for solutions. This is a complete disregard for human lives. As a result, more collisions will happen, and more lives will be lost from out-of-control high-speed trains.

Consequently, the train accident in Wenzhou was not a natural disaster, but a man-made calamity.