That’s really interesting and plausible. But there are still questions: why was there was only one incident if it was a known fault with older trains? Why did the driver not show any signs of panic or self-protection when he couldn’t slow down and the crash was imminent? Was it a coincidence that the fault occurred when the guard was away from his post?
I guess it could’ve been one of those “accident waiting to happen” scenarios. A fault, which drivers knew about and knew how to circumvent… until one time things went catastrophically wrong and the driver somehow wasn’t able to react?
I do think it’s a coincidence that the guard had wandered off to find a newspaper. That was just so plausible.
The thing about possibly-preventable tragedies is there’s never one definite cause, it’s more like a perfect storm of small mistakes that snowball into a catastrophe.
Take the Manchester Arena Inquiry. I saw a lot of people moaning on Twitter that it was a waste of money because we know who was responsible. But it’s so much more complex than that. There were failures with the security services who knew the bomber was dodgy and associated with terrorists. There was lax security at the arena (such as poorly trained young staff and CCTV blackspots). Failures by police, taking meal breaks longer than allowed, not patrolling at certain times and places despite being explicitly told to. Failures by the ambulance and fire services… I could go on.
Sorry, I’ve gone off on a completely irrelevant tangent! It’s terrible that nobody could ever get to the bottom of what caused that crash. What a burden for all the families of those who died, and the people who were injured.
