The timing is quite unusual. Shortly before Christmas, the Munich II public prosecutor’s office brought charges against three Deutsche Bahn employees on suspicion of negligent homicide and negligent bodily harm following the train accident near Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the middle of last year. On June 3, 2022, a regional train derailed on the way to Munich. Five passengers were killed, 16 people were seriously injured and 62 people were slightly injured. The single-track route was then closed for a long time.
The fact that the Munich II public prosecutor’s office launched the charges so shortly before Christmas suggests that the lengthy and complicated investigation should definitely be completed this year. The indictment is based on several reports. The presumption of innocence applies to the three railway employees. The Munich II Regional Court must now decide whether there will be a trial. Given the serious allegations and the importance of the case, it can be assumed that a trial would begin sometime next year.
The derailed regional train is one of the worst train accidents in Bavaria in recent years. The public prosecutor’s office assumes human error. In the foreseeable process, whether there was a system failure on the railway will also play a role. Large parts of the rail network have been neglected for decades and are sometimes in a miserable condition.
In retrospect, the accident near Garmisch-Partenkirchen turned out to be particularly tragic. A repair planned for May 20, 2022, exactly two weeks before the accident at the later site of the accident, was not carried out, according to findings from the investigations by the public prosecutor’s office and Deutsche Bahn. On May 24, 2022, the person responsible for the system postponed the threshold change until October 2022. On June 3rd the train derailed. The railway had initiated its own investigation and commissioned a law firm to do so.
The three accused are the person responsible at the time for the railway systems in a large part of Werdenfelser Land; about the route inspector who examined the routes for damage; and a dispatcher at the time. The day before the accident, a train driver reported to the dispatcher that his train was “hopping” at the later accident site. The dispatcher is said to have not passed on this information as required. If that had happened, the route might have been closed. Or at least a so-called slow driving station would have been arranged; with the result that a train derailment would have had far less dramatic consequences.
That is the suspicion. The person responsible for the system is apparently blamed for not having repaired the relevant section of the route in a timely manner. The inspector responsible for the accident site is said to have checked this section of the route a few days before the accident. He is said to have come to the conclusion that there was no need to close the route; A slow speed station still needs to be set up. However, the accident raises numerous questions that go beyond the responsibility of the three railway employees.