The Penukonda rail accident that claimed 25 lives and left several injured could have been avoided had the High Level Safety Review Committee of Railways taken into consideration the points put forth by the All India Loco Running Staff Association to provide signalling details to the loco driver in the cab itself.
In its recommendations, the Association had said that in most cases the loco pilots are blamed as there are usually no direct evidence available with regards to signal aspects and the accident inquiries only rely on circumstantial and indirect evidences to arrive at conclusions.
While investigations into the Penukonda rail accident is still on, preliminary findings have blamed that the crash took place because the driver failed to notice the signal. “At present the loco pilots have to watch out for the signals from the cab. As per rules, the signal ought to be on the left side, however, it varies.
Further, it also leaves a lot of scope for human error. Hence a system is necessary to display the aspect of the signal well in advance in the cab itself to avoid any lapse on the part of the loco pilot in identifying the correct signal,” said Mr M.N. Prasad, secretary, AILRSA.
In spite of technologies introduced in Railways like Auxiliary Warning System, Train Protection Warning System, Anti Collision Device, Vigilance Control Device etc. to reduce the human dependence, collisions are still taking place on account of Signal Passing At Danger (SPAD) due to many constraints and limitations in the above technologies.
“Similar to the airlines, if the signalling information is made available to the loco drivers inside their cabs, it would bring down the chances of human error considerably,” added Mr Prasad.