- Greece has a poor track record for the safety of passengers traveling by train.
- Carriages that were knocked over and burned debris were left behind by the head-on accident.
- Several of the passengers on board were teenagers going home after a long weekend.
The country’s biggest railway accident in years has been acknowledged by Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the prime minister of Greece, who said, “We cannot, will not, and must not hide behind the human mistake.”
At least 57 people were killed and numerous others were injured when a passenger train carrying more than 350 people collided with a freight train on Tuesday evening in Tempi, close to the city of Larissa.
Following the fatal accident, protesters have been flooding the streets with their fury about the nation’s track record for railway safety. On Sunday, new upheaval erupted, with sights of protestors and police fighting in Athens that are anticipated to be witnessed all throughout the nation.
“This atrocity should not be hushed up, we will be the voice of all the dead,” was one of the slogans during Sunday’s demonstration in Athens.
Two trains traveling in opposing directions shouldn’t be able to “be on the same track and not be observed by anyone,” according to Mitsotakis.
“As prime minister, I owe a sincere apology to everyone, but especially to the victims’ families. Both on my own behalf and on behalf of everyone who ran the nation for a long time,” Mitsotakis declared.
The prime minister’s tone changed with his mention of human error. After the collision, he attributed it to a “tragic human mistake.”
While promising announcements in the coming days to “quickly improve the safety of the railways,” his most recent remark nevertheless revealed systemic issues with the Greek railway network.
Greek officials released dispatch tapes on Thursday following the arrest of a train station manager in Larissa in connection with the crash, which showed that one of the implicated train drivers had been given instructions to run a red light.
According to a 2022 report from the European Union Agency for Railways, Greece has a poor track record for the safety of passengers traveling by train compared to other countries in Europe, recording the highest railroad fatality rate per million train kilometers from 2018 to 2020 among 28 countries on the continent.
Carriages that were knocked over and burned debris were left behind by the head-on accident. Several of the passengers on board were teenagers going home after a long weekend.
In the wake of the catastrophe, the nation’s transport minister resigned, and a train workers’ union went on strike, accusing the government of failing to maintain the infrastructure.
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