Rail accident Greece: human error or systematic neglect?
The Minister of State Giorgos Gerapetritis and the outgoing Minister of Infrastructure and Transport Kostas Karamanlis in a meeting at the ministry follow the accident 2023, Greek ministry of Transport
The tragic railway accident involving a passenger and freight train in Greece has shocked the country and the world. With at least 46 people dead, and dozens missing and wounded, the accident triggered a series of resignations, including that of the Greek minister of transport. So far, it is attributed to human error that occurred due to “bad timing”; however, is this indeed the case?
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1.
Still, now, year 2023, “human factor”, has to be recognised a severe risk, thus duly outed from critical, risk functions!
2.
Tragedies caused by “human factor” is not “accidents”, but result of calculated risks!
(Media, “ours”, etc., shall finish, forgivingly, using “accident”, when not appropriate!)
Certainly we have (1) a lack of train control system, and (2) the station master was “new at the job” and probably inattentive (police will have checked his mobile phone activities). In the 19th century, railways also functioned without electronic train control.
(3) The operator “asked the passenger train to switch lines” without thinking about the freight train. Switching to the opposite lime would only be ordered for a reason. This additional cause of the accident also needs attention.
It is possible to affect operator’s behavior by administrative instructions, such as training, incentives, etc. This cannot not eliminate spontaneous activity, which sometimes results in accidents.
The system control should follow the Safety II paradigm, which means that the design constrains the system activity. The principles for the applying self control were introduced in 2004 with the STAMP paradigm, and ways to implement it were proposed by the methodology of scenario-based modelling.