Two high-speed trains collide near Toledo, Spain

https://www.euronews.com/video/2026/10/28/spain-first-footage-reveals-wreckage-of-deadly-high-speed-train-crash

75•evilmonkey19•1h ago

Comments

evilmonkey19•1h ago

https://elpais.com/espana/2026-10-28/ultima-hora-del-choque-...

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/28/spain-high-speed-train-crash...

https://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2026/10/28/toledo-tr...

https://www.reuters.com/live/spain-train-crash-live-deaths-i...

silverFork•1h ago

How is this even possible in this day and age. It can be all automated, double and quad checked enroute ..

Rapzid•1h ago

It's the second time this year too. In Spain. Same company.

nom•50m ago

apparently even the same line

paxy•57m ago

"In this day and age" means nothing when so many of these train systems are running on technology from the mid-1900s.

FeteCommuniste•54m ago

Spain didn't even have high-speed trains until the early 1990s so I don't think that's the case here.

paxy•37m ago

The network started construction in the late 1980s so that's still 40 years ago. The 90s weren't as recent as we all think..

bluGill•26m ago

Still recent enough to have computers fully able to control everything.

manarth•55m ago

It's been reported that the automated system had failed, so trains were being routed and instructed manually.

QuantumNomad_•50m ago

In Oslo, Norway, we have train signaling errors all the time it feels like. It leads to a lot of delays and things. But I think that when these systems are not working, it is better to slow down everything even going as far as to put some trains on hold for some time, to avoid human errors in manual instruction and routing leading to crashes and deaths.

anthk•50m ago

In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's.

But Toledo-Madrid it's a special high speed network with thousands of daily users heading Madrid to work, which is just 1h away from Toledo.

Still, I will always be pro-train because they can mass deliver goods at much higher ratio than by truck.

Kurtz79•42m ago

"In Spain the train network was neglected so car and oil companies could earn tons of money since the 70's."

That's patently false, as Spain has the largest High-speed rail network in the world after China and it has seen constant expansion for the last 30 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Spain

hylaride•35m ago

Maintenance and expansion are two different things. Governments of the day tend to favour big announcements for shiny new things, while simultaneously deferring maintenance whenever they can to redirect money to various other priorities.

anthk•15m ago

I'm from Spain, I know it well. Just check what happened with short-distance trains.

boringg•40m ago

This was my immediate thought -- this is such a tragic unforced error. It seems impossible for this to happen.

gpvos•35m ago

This route is the last of the Spanish high speed lines that still has an older train protection system. There has been a similar accident in 2002 in Germany where LZB was also used: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linienf%C3%B6rmige_Zugbeeinflu... . Now after 24 years you might think they had mitigating procedures in place...

FranOntanaya•18m ago

2006 subway accident in Valencia had a similar context, they used the FAP system, cheaper than ATP, which would have prevented the accident.

dist-epoch•57m ago

> El Mundo is reporting that the Iryo train flagged a failure in its LZB signalling system 10 minutes before the crash, but the train behind did not receive the information due to a potential human error.

> Investigators believe the AVE high-speed train travelling behind crashed into the stationary Iryo service.

> A human error by an [state-owned railway infrastructure company] Adif operator in response to a malfunction in the main signaling system is the likely cause of the accident, government sources said. This safety system is automated, but when it fails, it switches to manual mode. That is why the trains came to a stop when the automatic safety system failed, and service resumed under human control - and that is where the error occurred, according to initial analyses.

https://www.elmundo.es/economia/2026/10/28/6ae1c9a1e9cf4a372...

Bluestein•49m ago

Some further points: - Apparently some of the drivers involved were in training - Infra maintenance is abysmal. Budgets are poor and or misspent - Second time this happens, in 9 months

hylaride•37m ago

I was in Spain a year ago and it felt like the high speed trains weren't running as smoothly as they were when I was last there a decade earlier. At the time I chalked it up to false memories and not to judge based on vibes, but I guess my spidey senses were accurate. It also felt like a contradiction as there was a decent amount of expansion construction that I saw.

Alas, maintenance isn't sexy for governments.

ethfan•50m ago

When LZB drops out, does the fallback to ASFA plus verbal authorization actually enforce block separation, or is it basically just driver discipline at 300 km/h?

gpvos•24m ago

When on verbal authorization, controller discipline is probably more important than driver discipline. And I really hope they don't do that at 300 km/h.

swed420•46m ago

Already posted 3 hours ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50271032

billbuild•41m ago

10 deaths at last count. Amazing it's not 100% dead.

gpvos•38m ago

64 already. Those trains are quite long and sturdy. But there will be lots of severely wounded.

purpleidea•16m ago

The incompetence in the world that is likely the underlying cause for this, is a serious cancer that is ruining our society. We need to speak out even against what seems like lesser issues, because we normalize that behaviour until it perverts everything.

bob1029•6m ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Expertise

Ten days later, Git on macOS still trusts the compromised eMudhra certificates

Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI

ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Ops in US History

Start Doing Graph Theory

Git for the US Code

Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen

Ghostty 1.4

Genie 4

Amazon to buy satellite firm Globalstar in $11.57B deal

Two high-speed trains collide near Toledo, Spain

Emacs Turns 50

Show HN: Nasscad – local-first 3D CAD for browser and Windows

Ink droplets in motion snag top prize in Nikon Small World contest

Survival LLM: AI assistant and emergency library that runs on your own computer

WikiCity – Explore 100k Wikipedia Articles as a 3D City

MacOS Extensions Pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0

Decompiling Fast Food Tycoon 2: Drawing the World

About the compromised eMudhra intermediate CAs

Tailscale SSH: Investigation and remediation update

Early progress on accelerating drug development with Claude

Python's experimental JIT to be removed

Code-execution flaw in UEFI firmware threatens most servers on planet Earth

Raspberry Pi Zero 3W and Pi 4 Model A spotted in device trees

New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6

SS United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef

New iMac with M6

Jokes for the ZX81

Tell HN: I'm going on strike this November

Classification of Finite Simple Groups Formalized in Lean

A Love Letter to the Super Dimension Fortress

Two high-speed trains collide near Toledo, Spain

Comments

Ten days later, Git on macOS still trusts the compromised eMudhra certificates

Kentucky man becomes the first humanist granted religious exemption from AI

ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Ops in US History

Start Doing Graph Theory

Git for the US Code

Unveiling The Grid: PCBs made in America, twice as fast as Shenzhen

Ghostty 1.4

Genie 4

Amazon to buy satellite firm Globalstar in $11.57B deal

Two high-speed trains collide near Toledo, Spain

Emacs Turns 50

Show HN: Nasscad – local-first 3D CAD for browser and Windows

Ink droplets in motion snag top prize in Nikon Small World contest

Survival LLM: AI assistant and emergency library that runs on your own computer

WikiCity – Explore 100k Wikipedia Articles as a 3D City

MacOS Extensions Pack for the Apple Network Server v1.0

Decompiling Fast Food Tycoon 2: Drawing the World

About the compromised eMudhra intermediate CAs

Tailscale SSH: Investigation and remediation update

Early progress on accelerating drug development with Claude

Python's experimental JIT to be removed

Code-execution flaw in UEFI firmware threatens most servers on planet Earth

Raspberry Pi Zero 3W and Pi 4 Model A spotted in device trees

New 14‑inch MacBook Pro with M6

SS United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef

New iMac with M6

Jokes for the ZX81

Tell HN: I'm going on strike this November

Classification of Finite Simple Groups Formalized in Lean

A Love Letter to the Super Dimension Fortress