http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-38041755

The death toll following the derailment of a train in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state has reached at least 115, with more than 150 injured, police say.

Fourteen carriages of the Indore-Patna Express derailed just after 03:00 local time on Sunday (21:30 GMT Saturday) near the city of Kanpur.

Rescuers are still trying to reach the injured and recover the dead from the twisted carriages.

The cause of the crash near the village of Pukhrayan is not yet known.

However, the Times of India quoted sources as saying a fracture in the track could have been to blame.

The death toll has been rising steadily all day and is expected to increase further.

---

Sadly India does not have a brilliant safety record on their railways.

Guardian

Not surprising.



Aside from the excessive overcrowding on certain trains (no, not all are like the one above), the infrastructure on many lines hasn't been improved upon since colonial days. Just lots of patch-up jobs.
And unfortunately even on the newest of lines the Quality Control during construction & operational maintenance is often seriously lacking.

EDIT- And as for people staying on the platform, keeping off of the rails? If only...

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Fuel exhaustion
http://abc7.com/news/pilot-told-colombian-controllers-plane-had-no-fuel-before-crash/1632726/

"'We ran out of fuel. The airplane turned off,'" Sanchez told Arquimedes Mejia, who helped pull the flight attendant from the wreckage.

Human failure.

---

Probably not the best way to get a good bargain on a Mercedes.

---

EDIT CORRECTED POSTING:
Tesla Model S driver walks away from crash with a truck at ‘tremendous speed’

Earlier this week, the fact that the Tesla Model S broke the machine used to test the roof structure of cars during a round of tests by US regulators came up again on social media despite having happened over 3 years ago. Coincidentally, a Model S owner put the roof to the test today in an unfortunate real world scenario when he crashed into a truck on the Autobahn in Germany.

The Model S lodged itself under the truck and despite the severity of the impact, the driver reportedly was able to get himself out of the car and walk to safety – though his injuries were described as “serious,” but not critical.

---

What an Idiot.
Driver live-streams 104 mph crash

A driver live-streamed himself speeding and weaving in and out of traffic before crashing into a garbage truck in Rhode Island.
Source: CNN

---

What an Idiot.
Driver live-streams 104 mph crash

A driver live-streamed himself speeding and weaving in and out of traffic before crashing into a garbage truck in Rhode Island.
Source: CNN

Yep, He's an idiot alright.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

The day the music died.

The plane crash has yet to be fully explained.
It was pilot error.

We are fully and totally devastated by the loss.
Just not possible to believe./
This was back in 50 miles or so right in my back yard.
I have heard of the arifield.

---

"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Vertical integration - all too often in recent years Network Fail have worked on their maintenance plan in total isolation, only informing the operating companies as late as they are allowed to do. Meanwhile the operating companies have been developing their timetables and publicity not knowing what Network Fail are thinking. Then there's a big row when the two sets of schedules emerge into the daylight.
Under this new way of working both will have to talk to each other, the biggest impact will not be on the day-today maintenance but on the larger upgrades that the operators want, so they can improve their operations......

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

The managements attention is drawn away from value to the customer and future maintenance, and towards dividends for the shareholders.

Here the power company was corporatised quite a few years ago, then they (the government) decided to split off the sales portion from the network portion. All for the good of the consumer. Being a government corporation, the government (all of them over the years) have used the income from Power & Water as general revenue. All the money that they made & put aside for future works was considered "unnecessary & excessive" & "gave a poor return on investment" & could be put to much better use- by the government.
So Power did what they could to keep the government (shareholder) happy, and the easiest way to improve the financial returns is to reduce staffing levels & un-necessary maintenance. The end result?
Power outages are more frequent & last for longer. It's estimated it will cost $500 million to do all the maintenance & repairs (and replacement of things that if they had been maintained wouldn't need replacing), so of course power bills will have to go up, a lot, each year.

There was a explosion & fire in a substation a few years back; the result of the enquiry was that if the equipment had been maintained as per it's schedule the explosion wouldn't have occurred. Although almost 50 years old, if maintained as per it's guidelines it would have had another 25 or more years in it. Unfortunately Power didn't have the necessary staff to do such major maintenance as they were made redundant years before as being an unnecessary expense. Even if the equipment had just been checked (as per the maintenance schedule) the issue would have been detected earlier & the transformer switched out.
But maintenance costs, and that really impacts the bottom line. Of course if things go down in a screaming heap (or up in flames) 1, 2, 5 years after the goose who made the decisions to shelve such un-necessary work has moved on elsewhere, and the replacements didn't see fit to re-instate it, then how could any of them be held responsible?

Do I sound just a bit bitter & twisted? Hell yeah.

---

Grant
Darwin NT

Anyone with one ounce of common sense

Government = common sense
Thanks for the best belly laugh I've had this decade.

---

In the case of Network Fail it is not just those elected into Government, but those that employed in government that led to the current situation. Indeed I would lay much of the blame for those employed telling those elected what to do, so the employed have less work and little responsibility for their actions, particularly their inaction as demonstrated by lack of communication to other parties....

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Privatization, yeah CA had a spate of that, in the Electrical & Water sectors, Eron really ripped people off, We were told it would be cheaper, our bills rose a lot, some water companies are being taken public again under eminent domain laws, after people found out privatized didn't mean less expensive, it meant bigger bills, that could rise at anytime, for no reason at all...

Fortunately this did not happen to Caltrans or to any transportation related government function.

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Fortunately this did not happen to Caltrans or to any transportation related government function.

It did. The Toll Roads.

---

Fortunately this did not happen to Caltrans or to any transportation related government function.

It did. The Toll Roads.

Nope, they're still owned by Caltrans, instead of paying for the hwys like normal, it was decided to toll them and pay for them with revenue bonds.

The toll road was constructed by the Transportation Corridor Agencies, also known as the TCA, and is owned by the state of California. Construction was financed with bonds, which are repaid with toll revenues. Taxpayers are not responsible for repaying any debt if toll revenues fall short.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Route_241#Route_description

---

The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

Fortunately this did not happen to Caltrans or to any transportation related government function.

It did. The Toll Roads.

Nope, they're still owned by Caltrans,

They are now, the private authority was in danger of going belly up and Caltrans had to bail them out. It is also the reason the two different authorities are now under one roof. I know this because a dear friend had to serve on a jury where someone sued California claiming the roadway was deficient and the fact that Caltrans did not build it or operate it at first and only came to have it afterwards was an important part of determining liability. Did Caltrans have to upgrade the road to their standards when they took it over? It was not built to Caltrans standards at the time.

---

California is a prime example of an area that traditionally can't sort out it's transport. The BART is good but some fool is trying to build a hyperloop or something isn't he? Hyper loopy if you ask me.

California has had a pretty good handle on transportation since the 1970s when they embraced the state support options of Amtrak. The San Diego Trolley came along in the early 80s, and I think it was the 90s when Los Angeles started building their disorganized collection of subway and light rail lines, and also jumped wholeheartedly into commuter rail.

The hyperloop is indeed loopy, but it's not just any damned fool, it's Elon Musk.

---

David
Sitting on my butt while others boldly go,
Waiting for a message from a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/two-train-cars-exploded-in-bulgaria-after-derailing/

SOFIA, Bulgaria -- A derailed tanker train exploded Saturday and decimated a village in northeastern Bulgaria, killing seven people and leaving least 29 injured, many with severe burns, the Interior Ministry said.

Authorities said about 50 buildings in the village of Hitrino were destroyed when containers of gas exploded at 5:40 a.m.

---

I question your assertion that this accident was not a major headline in the UK - it was near the top of every radio newscast I heard, with emerging details as the day wore on.
Like you I am amased at the low casualty rate given the population of the village. One possible explanation is that in some countries the population is quoted for the whole village, not just the central area - I need to have a look at google maps to see how spread out the village is....

Edit - just looked at google and taken another look at the video - it would appear that the bulk of the fire was in an "industrial" area, not a residential one, which does explain the low casualty rate. Still it was bad enough for those that were in the blast field :-(

---

Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

He wanted to provide extra ventilation :-)