(The Associated Press circulated the following story on December 27.)
TOKYO — The president of a Japanese railroad is resigning to take responsibility for an April derailment that killed 107 people, the country’s deadliest railway accident in decades, a company spokesman said Tuesday.
Takes Kakiuchi’s resignation from West Japan Railway Co. came a day after another fatal derailment by another company within the Japan Railway group. West Japan Railway didn’t immediately say if the latest accident had anything to do with the resignation.
Sunday’s crash in the northern town of Yamagata killed four people and injured 30 others when a six-car express train skidded off its tracks, swept by a sudden gust in a blizzard. The cause of the accident is under investigation. The train was operated by Japan Railroad East Co.
Kakiuchi, 61, will be replaced by the Osaka-based company’s vice president, Masao Yamazaki, West Japan spokesman Makoto Masamoto said.
The crash of the West Japan commuter train on April 25 triggered national concerns about the safety of public transportation and prompted government inspection into the nation’s railway operation.
The train jumped its tracks during the morning rush hour, barreling into an apartment building in Amagasaki, about 250 miles west of Tokyo. The crash killed 107 people and injured more than 500 others, and was Japan’s worst since 1963.
Investigators believed the train’s 23-year-old driver, who was among the dead, was far exceeding the speed limit.
Train drivers face heavy pressure to keep to timetables in Japan, which is famous for its punctual rail service. West Japan Railway has acknowledged that psychological pressure on an inexperienced driver might have contributed to the April accident.
West Japan has since improved an emergency braking system, loosened its timetables to allow for more time between trains and retrained its drivers in the run-up to the resumption of service.
Meanwhile Monday, Japan’s government ordered emergency inspections of railway wind gauges following the latest crash, and criticized the train operator.
The train was running about an hour late but traveling under the 74 mph speed limit in the area. It was not required to slow down despite the windy weather, JR East spokesman Jun Kubota said. Kyodo News agency reported that winds reached nearly 44 mph near the site of the wreck.
Company executive Masaki Ogata quoted the train’s 29-year-old driver as saying that the train had tilted to the left after it was buffeted by a gust of wind from the right.
“Then the lights went off and he got disoriented,” Ogata said.
Most of the injured passengers were riding in the first two cars, said Yamagata police spokesman Yoshikatsu Oe. They were taken to hospitals and none was in life-threatening condition.
JR East executives were summoned to the Transport Ministry and handed a harshly worded warning accusing the company of “eroding public trust in the safety of the railway transit system,” ministry official Hiromi Mishima said.
The president of JR East, Mutsutake Otsuka, apologized for the accident at a news conference Monday.