(The Associated Press circulated the following article on September 25.)
BERLIN — German officials acknowledged Sunday the test track where a high-speed magnetic train crashed, killing 23 people, was not equipped with the most up-to-date security system, noting such an accident ”would never have happened” on tracks where such safeguards were in place.
Traffic Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee said the security plan used by the company that ran the maglev train along a closed stretch of test track in northwest Germany met government code.
At the same time, however, he insisted that a future maglev train being envisioned for Munich would be outfitted with a more sophisticated safety system.
”This accident would never have been able to happen in Munich,” Tiefensee told reporters after meeting with industry leaders and the transport minister of Bavaria, the state where Munich is located.
Their talks focused on what could be learned from the crash to improve the safety of future maglev trains, which are unpopular in Germany despite having been developed here.
Maglev trains skim over a guideway on powerful magnetic fields without touching the track. That cuts friction and enables speeds of up to 270 mph. The name is short for magnetic levitation.
Investigators of Friday’s crash in the western German town of Lathen, which also injured 10 people, are focusing their efforts on why controllers gave the go-ahead for the train to start moving even though a wheeled maintenance vehicle was parked on the track.
The maintenance vehicle was not part of the electronic security system that allows controllers to track the magnetic train’s location along the 20-mile stretch of track. Instead, controllers kept track of the vehicle’s position on a separate system, using manual and visual controls, such as a GPS satellite navigational device.
”What we are looking into is why the train was given the go-ahead even though the maintenance vehicle was on the track,” said Alexander Retemeyer, a spokesman for the prosecutors who are leading the investigation.
As of Sunday, the controllers on duty at the time of the accident had not yet been interviewed, as they were still in shock and undergoing psychological treatment, officials said.
The maintenance car was hit by the low nose of the train as it traveled at a speed of 105 mph. The vehicle was flung upward, ripping open the top of the first car of the train and strewing mangled seats, shards of glass and twisted metal parts below the 12-foot-high track. Most of the passengers riding on the train were in that car and had no chance of survival.
Victims included included one U.S. citizen: Ernest Lieb, 66, a martial arts expert from Muskegon, Mich., who was visiting his native Germany to conduct a seminar on karate.
Other victims have not been publicly identified. Officials said they included workers for Transrapid International, the company that makes the train. The track, operated by Munich-based IABG, is mainly used to show off maglev technology, but tourists are allowed to ride the train.
Prosecutors have determined that the driver of the train did pull the emergency brake, but not before it was so close to the maintenance vehicle — between 55 and 110 yards — that it was not able to prevent the accident.
Investigators planned to sift through hours of recorded radio traffic between the controllers and drivers of the two vehicles to try and determine which commands had been given and, possibly, why the magnetic train’s driver did not see the vehicle earlier.
Although German railway trains that travel at speeds of 160 mph are equipped with safety devices that can automatically stop the train if an obstruction is detected on the track up to seven miles away, the magnetic train had no such capabilities.
The crash came as Tiefensee was visiting China to urge officials there to extend their use of the German-made technology along a route in Shanghai, one of only two commercially operating maglev trains in the world. The other is near Nagoya, Japan.