4 railway employees referred to trial on gross negligence charges

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Tue, 23 Oct 2018 - 12:30 GMT

BY

Tue, 23 Oct 2018 - 12:30 GMT

FILE – Gavel in a courtroom – Flickr/Joe Gratz

FILE – Gavel in a courtroom – Flickr/Joe Gratz

CAIRO - 23 October 2018: The administrative prosecution has referred four officials at the Railway Authority to an urgent disciplinary trial on charges of gross negligence that resulted in the death of 43 persons in a train collision.

Another 236 persons were injured in the collision in Alexandria that also caused damage to railway property worth LE 80.603 million.

Drivers of the two trains that collided in 2017 are among the defendants in the case sent to the court by the administrative prosecution.

The two Alexandria-bound trains coming from Port Said and Cairo had collided in 2017 and a joint committee of military engineers and the Administrative Control Authority examined the circumstances behind the accident and submitted a report indicating who's responsible for it.

One of the drivers had ignored semaphore signals for him to stop or even slow down before he hit the other train, which was stopping only 300 meters away.

The driver of the first train had also intentionally disabled the braking system using a stick that he had placed on top of the Automatic Train Control (ATC) apparatus, which automatically stops the train if it exceeds speed limits.

The driver of the first train had also started the trip without making sure that the walkie-talkie was effectively working.

The driver of the second train also had not checked his walkie-talkie and had not contacted the central control to get permission to move. He had also failed to inform the control office to stop the other train, while his train was stopping for quite some time.

Two observers of the semaphore had not also taken any action to adjust colors of the signals, which could have prevented the collision.

All four defendants face charges of gross negligence.

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