25 years ago, an ICE derailed in Eschede – the worst train accident in Germany to date. More than 100 people died. How did the accident change the safety concept of the railway?
Eschede – the name of the community in Lower Saxony stands for the worst rail accident in the history of the Federal Republic: 101 people die. More than 100 other travelers are injured.
On June 3, 1998, the ICE “Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen” was traveling from Munich to Hamburg at a speed of 200 km/h when a tire broke and a chain of unfortunate circumstances ensued. The rear part of the train finally derailed at two switches in front of a road bridge over the railway line, causing the bridge to collapse. The following wagons push into each other like a folding rule.
After the accident, Deutsche Bahn draws consequences: All ICE trains are equipped with so-called monoblock wheels – i.e. wheels cast from a piece of steel where no wheel tire can break off, as railway spokesman Achim Stauss explains. In addition, the monitoring of the wheels has been improved by ultrasonic testing. In addition, points are no longer used in front of bridges on lines that are being built. And: On many routes there is now so-called impact protection in front of bridges – concrete blocks that are intended to prevent derailing trains from causing a bridge to collapse.
On June 3, 1998, hundreds of helpers searched for survivors in the wreckage of the crashed ICE – the carriages pushed into each other like a folding rule.
Accidents in Bad Aibling and Hordorf
However, there are very different reasons why a train crashes. Even after the Eschede accident, there were serious train accidents in Germany with several fatalities: Twelve people died in February 2016 when two regional trains crashed head-on into each other on a single-track line near Bad Aibling in Bavaria. 89 people are injured, some seriously. The dispatcher responsible for controlling and regulating traffic on the route in the signal box was distracted by a game on his smartphone. However, victims and relatives also see the railways as responsible – because of the partly outdated technology.
In January 2011, two trains also collided head-on on a single-track line near Hordorf in Saxony-Anhalt. Ten people die and more than 20 are injured. Again: human error. The engine driver of a freight train had probably run over stop signals. Here, too, criticism of the Deutsche Bahn: An automatic emergency braking system would have prevented the collision of the freight train with the regional train, but it was not yet installed at Hordorf at the time. There are now such emergency braking systems throughout Germany, says Bahn spokesman Stauss.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen: errors in the rail network
In June 2022, five people die when a regional train derails near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria. 78 other passengers are injured, 16 of them seriously. Concrete sleepers, which are supposed to hold the rails securely in the track bed, were probably damaged and thus the main cause of the accident. Almost a year later, the Federal Bureau for Railway Accident Investigation came to this conclusion.
As a consequence of the accident, special inspections and the replacement of concrete sleepers were started; the sleepers in the rail network would now be checked even more closely. This year alone, 480,000 concrete sleepers are to be replaced, Deutsche Bahn announced this week, five times more than usual. According to the group, this will lead to 400 additional construction sites in the rail network and affect the punctuality of the trains.
source of error modernization backlog and safety culture
The passenger association Pro Bahn criticizes that the system Bahn in Germany needs more money to make the safety when traveling by train technically as good as it could be. A complete digitization is needed, says Karl-Peter Naumann, the association’s honorary chairman – so that it becomes more difficult for people to make mistakes like in Bad Aibling. “Clearly, politicians must really (…) invest properly in the system infrastructure so that the greatest possible security can really be established. That is very important.”
Digitization alone is not the solution, says Birgit Milius, civil engineer and professor of railway operations and infrastructure at the Technical University of Berlin. “Technology can support people, definitely. Technology can also make the system safer. We always have to see how we can properly involve people.”
A good safety culture is also crucial, according to Milius. For example, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, just as a mind game: “What do I do as an employee when I know I have a route that’s so tough on the limit – and maybe my gut feeling even tells me I’d rather block it because I know it’s critical?” On the other hand, the public pressure is great if a route is closed again. Then you need employees who say: “I’ll do it anyway, I have the backing of my bosses.”
“Safety takes precedence over punctuality”
Bahn spokesman Stauss emphasizes that “safety has priority over punctuality and efficiency”. Just because the network is getting old does not mean that it is less secure. It will then be driven more slowly in places. And: “We all experience it sometimes that one stands on the platform and the train is not provided that one actually expects: different carriages, different vehicle model,” says Stauss. “The reason for this is often such that, for example, defects were found during an ICE’s visit to the factory that do not lead to an accident, but which are not quite okay.” If in doubt, stop the train.
So how safe can you feel when traveling by train in Germany, 25 years after Eschede? Train operations researcher Milius travels a lot by train, she says, and she always feels safer on the train than in the car. Naumann from the passenger association considers the railway system to be by far the safest means of transport. And railway spokesman Stauss says that “only a few accidents happened, considering that we have 50,000 train journeys every day, sometimes at high speeds and with heavy loads”. Of course, that’s cold consolation for the people who were hurt, he admits.