YILAN, Taiwan: The driver of a train in Taiwan that crashed killing 18 people told a court on Tuesday (Oct 23) he had switched off its speed-control system, a court official said, as investigators pieced together events that led to the island's worst rail crash in decades.
The train came off the rails on Sunday on a curve while moving at almost 140 kmh, nearly twice the speed limit of 74 kmh, in the island's mountainous northeast, the head of a government investigation team said.
Chief investigator Wu Ze-cheng told Reuters earlier it was not clear whether the speed-control system, called automatic train protection, had switched off by itself or had been manually disabled before the accident, which also injured 187 people.
A spokesman for Taiwan Yilan District Court told Reuters the driver told his bail hearing he switched off the system himself to boost the train's power when it had slowed down on an earlier stretch of the journey.
"He should have turned the system back on at the next stop," said the court spokesman, Huang Yong-sheng.
"The defendant is highly suspected to have been negligent."
Source from Channel News Asia
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