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TWO AMERICANS AND a Spaniard were gored at the first running of the bulls at the annual San Fermin fiesta in Pamplona today.
“A Spaniard from the Navarro region… is in a serious condition and two Americans (are) in a less serious condition,” the festival said in a statement.
The nine-day fiesta, which kicked off yesterday, dates back to the Middle Ages, commemorating a local saint.
Crowd of revellers, dressed in white and red and often fuelled by copious amounts of wine, sprint down the narrow streets of Pamplona pursued by six bulls.
The three-minute, 850-metre ritual was immortalised by Ernest Hemingway in the 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises.
Fifteen people have died since 1911, with the last fatality occurring in 2009. In 2016, 87 were injured, many of them gored or trampled by the bulls.
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This really shouldn’t happen in this day and age in a modern western country
It shouldn’t but it can if a driver disobeys a signal inadvertently or not.
Some cab signal systems will stop the train in a situation like this, but the driver may be able to override it to some degree.
There might be no cab signalling, the system might be down.
This section of line is privately owed. And has no proper advance warning system it is run by station masters making phone calls to other stations to see if the single line is clear ,a very antiquated way of running a railway in this modern era but devastating when mistakes are made ,as we all can see ,I would reserve blaming anyone till the investigation is complete,
I remember my dad telling my that in the case of a train crash, the middle and second last carriages were always the least likely to de-rail. I always choose the second last carriage. Look at the picture.
Strange this points to a big signalling failure or driver error.
The train network in Italy is superb usually, certainly safer than driving over there.
Or maybe one of the drivers had a stroke or seizure.
Good point Shawn but train’s like this would be fitted with a device called the Deadman pedal. A bell or buzzer with go off every so often and the driver with have to press pedal. If not the emergency brakes would kick in
Their banks are on for a collision Aswell..
Skydiving feels safer than driving in Italy Jimmy
Go to talk about banks somewhere else please. Thank you
Thanks Kaz.
It appears that telephone block signalling was used on this line, this is an antiquated system. See arnie reply above.
Extract from article:
Ferrotramviaria’s 81km network is electrified at 3kV dc and includes 40km of single-track line. Track-doubling is underway on the section where the collision occurred and the line is still equipped with telephone block signalling. Last December the company had announced plans to install the Italian SCMT automatic train protection system on the Ruvo – Bitonto section of the Bari – Barletta line.
Death toll is rising, sadly.
have your say