Santiago de Compostela derailment

Rare card · No. 15120

On 24 July 2013, an Alvia high-speed train travelling from Madrid to Ferrol, in the north-west of Spain, derailed at high speed on a bend about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) outside the railway station at Santiago de Compostela. Of the 178 people injured, the final number of deaths had reached 79. The train's data recorder showed that it had been travelling at over twice the posted speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph) when it entered a curve on the track. The crash was recorded on a track-side camera that shows all 13 train cars derailing and four overturning. On 28 July 2013, the train's driver, Francisco José Garzón Amo, was charged with 79 counts of homicide by professional recklessness and an undetermined number of counts of causing injury by professional recklessness. The crash was Spain's worst rail accident in over 40 years, since a crash near El Cuervo, Seville, in 1972.[note 1] It is also the second-deadliest high-speed train accident in history, after the 1998 Eschede train...

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