DC editing | As the number of accidents increases, railroads have questions to answer

But it is a broader picture of common derailments, whether caused by human error in the system, someone forgetting to switch trains back to the route they were supposed to be on, or by train crew errors, or by demonstrable acts of sabotage as recent events give Cause of great concern and cause fear about rail transport in the country.

There were mitigating factors such as Linke-Hofmann-Busch (LHB) cars of German technology that do not slide into each other in the event of an accident, a slower speed of the train, which was scheduled to negotiate a curve shortly after the station through which it was supposed to pass, and The The design of the freight train’s protective car, which absorbed much of the shock, may have proved fortunate in this derailment as it did not result in loss of life and injuries to some passengers.

The Mysore-Darbhanga Bagmati Express is said to have suffered a very violent jolt while entering the station and mysteriously switched to the ring route instead of continuing on the released main line, leading to the derailment of a dozen coaches and causing chaos and panic led in the dark for almost 1,300 people who may have been sitting on the national long-distance train.

The question that has to be asked is whether the Indian Railways can be trusted to protect the lives of the millions of passengers who choose to travel by train because not a month goes by without trains going off the tracks or even crash into each other as happened in the most tragic accident in Balasore, Orissa in June 2023 in which nearly 300 passengers were killed and nearly a thousand injured?

While opposition politicians criticize and blame the establishment when they spontaneously criticize or report an accident, the criticism should take into account whether the railway as a company has gone out of control in terms of the most important safety factor, which is crucial for around 350 million passengers take Indian trains every year, meaning almost a million people are passengers every day.

There are several questions to which the railway must feel responsible enough to find answers. Is the system understaffed? Is security not adequately funded in the state budget? How about enabling the low-cost Kavach Shield system on the country’s main routes and trains faster than the mentioned four to five years?

The answer to the question of whether ways can be found to increase the responsibility of the maintenance team in maintaining the tracks and rolling stock with the greatest possible safety remains to be seen, since responsibility is not the greatest national ideal, especially not in the state-owned companies. It is sad but true that passengers board trains with a slight feeling of fear because there is not an alternative everywhere.