The Taiwan Transportation Safety Board (TTSB) plans to spend another year reviewing data it hopes will identify the cause of the Puyuma Express derailment on Oct. 21 last year, and it plans to conduct an accident simulation once it has completed its data collection.
Since the board was established two months ago, it has been reviewing the Executive Yuan’s accident investigation report, as stipulated by a Legislative Yuan resolution, TTSB Chairman Young Hong-tsu (楊宏智) said.
That report covered railway track alignment, the speed at which the train derailed and whether the train’s tilting device was functioning normally at the time, and it said that the train did not encounter any foreign objects, had an unreliable power output and was operating with a malfunctioned pump compressor, he said.
Photo: Chang Yi-chen, Taipei Times
The board has decided that it should examine evidence in six more categories, in accordance with the Transportation Occurrence Investigation Act (運輸事故調查法), Young said.
This includes how the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) normally handles trains with malfunctioning devices before they are dispatched; how train drivers detect and report problems with a train’s power system; how the TRA has been repairing and maintaining its pump compressors; what procedures drivers should take to deactivate the automatic train protection (ATP) system, and if the TRA has used ATPs to monitor train operations.
The board said that it would also seek to determine the speed at which the train was operating at the time of accident as well as the angle at which it tilted, and if the braking system was functioning normally.
It would review the data collected from the railway tracks and derailed train’s carriages.
Rail Occurrence Investigation Division convener Li Gang (李綱) said the Executive Yuan was under the gun when it compiled its report, which made it impossible for it to conduct an in-depth investigation.
“We will try to recover the data stored on the damaged memory chips of the train’s control-management system and use the data to conduct simulations, such as the angle at which the train tilted. We can also compare images recorded inside and from outside the train. The cross-examinations would ensure that the investigation would generate valid results,” he said.
Young said the board has also obtained photographs taken by uncrewed aerial vehicles and would compare the images with the results of the accident simulations.
It has received a letter from a TRA employee that urged it to investigate the train’s carriages as well, he said.
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