Spain’s rail network is under scrutiny after a commuter train crashed near Barcelona just days after at least 43 people died and 152 were injured in a collision between two high-speed trains.
The second crash in as many days occurred at approximately 9pm on Tuesday when a retaining wall collapsed on to the track near Gelida in the region of Catalonia in north-east Spain, derailing a local train.
A trainee driver, named as 27-year-old Fernando Huerta from Seville, was killed and 41 people were injured, five of whom are in a critical condition.
It is believed the wall collapsed as a result of the unusually heavy rainfall that Catalonia is experiencing. However, as a precaution the region’s network was shut down pending inspections, stranding hundreds of thousands of people and causing chaos on the roads.
“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the trains.”
I’m traveling to Europe and planning to use only trains to move around and I’m already stressed out that my car brained family is going to try to push me into renting a car instead.
An average day in 2024, 54 people in the EU died in road accidents, per Eurostat.
Edit:
Somewhere around 40 people a day die in road accidents in the EU. (Eurostat seems to only have numbers with the actual number of dead for 2023 so far and that year I think it was something like 47 per day on average, but other sources show road deaths decreased somewhat in 2024.The last wagon of the train is by far the safest. In both of these accidents, people in the last cars of all of these three trains have made it out unscathed.
Just promise to be in the last wagon. You can go to the last wagon, or to one of the last ones, even if your ticket is for another one.
Similar to planes where sitting in the seats beside the wings tends to be the safest place (due to the enhanced structure).
“Trains keep crashing, my family wants to not use trains” seems like a common sense approach when the rail network in one region is having some very serious issues. Stay with trains outside of Spain but don’t let train brain cross you in Spain.
Pretty sure more people die in car accidents on Spain each year that in train accidents, but we never hear about them.
Yes, quick check says 57 per week, so more than that train crash each week.
There’s has been already 42 dead people for car crashes on Spanish roads this year. That looks like a very serious issue there.
When I went to Europe a few years ago, I found that the taxi services were really great. Like, getting a cab in Valencia was about as easy as calling an Uber while being a bit cheaper. There really is no need to rent a car.
Didn’t people warn about underfunding of rail maintenance under the EU’s HSR liberalization?
