alt Hacker News>If a train exceeds its permitted speed for any reason, the system intervenes immediately
That might be because Japan did have a huge railway accident in 2005 due to excessive speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment
> Of the roughly 700 passengers, 106 passengers and the driver were killed, and 562 others were injured
The Santiago de Compostela derailment (first link on the parent comment) happened in 2013 for the same reason.
All that said, I would not be surprised if the culprit for this particular case is lack of maintenance. However I would wait until the official investigation is over before drawing conclusions.
Replies
> That might be because Japan did have a huge railway accident in 2005 due to excessive speed.
No, Japan more or less invented ATC in the 1960s for the purpose of running the Shinkansen safely.
For context: the aforementioned crash in Japan was not on a high-speed / Shinkansen line but a normal commuter train. Both the 2013 accident in Spain and the recent one were high speed trains.
I’m not sure these are comparable, high-speed rail needs much tighter tolerances as the risk is orders of magnitude higher. As the parent comment stated there have been zero major crashes on the japanese shinkansen lines.