On Saturday, 2nd March, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw revealed that the driver and the assistant driver of one of the two passenger trains that collided on 29th October 2023 in Andhra Pradesh were watching a cricket match on the phone. The accident took place at around 7 PM on the Howrah-Chennai line in Kantakapalli of district Vizianagaram. The Rayagada Passenger train hit the Visakhapatnam Palasa train from behind, resulting in the death of 14 passengers and leaving 50 injured.
Speaking to news agency PTI, the minister said, “The recent case in Andhra Pradesh happened because both the loco pilot and co-pilot were distracted by the cricket match which was going on. Now we are installing systems which can detect any such distraction and make sure that the pilots and the assistant pilots are fully focussed on running the train.”
Vaishnaw added, “We will continue to put our focus on safety. We try to find out the root cause of every incident and we come up with a solution so that it is not repeated.”
The Commissioners of Railway Safety (CRS) conducted a probe into the Vizianagaram train accident. Its report is yet to be made public. On the next day of the accident, the railway said in a preliminary report that the driver and the assistant driver of the Rayadaga Passenger train were responsible for the accident as the train passed two defective auto signals violating norms. Both of them died in the accident.
Vizianagaram train accident
On 29th October, two passenger trains collided in the district Vizianagaram of Andhra Pradesh, leading to the death of at least 13 passengers. Several passengers were reported injured in the accident. The incident happened after a passenger train that was heading to Rayagada from Visakhapatnam derailed after colliding with another train in Andhra Pradesh’s Vizianagaram district
Balasore Train Accident
Just four months before the train accident in Andhra, India’s most devastating train accident took place in Balasore, Odisha. On 2nd June 2023, 296 people died, and over 1,200 were injured in the tragic accident at Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, Odisha. On the day of the accident, the Coromandel Express crashed into a stationary freight train. As a result of the Balasore Train Accident, some of the derailed coaches fell onto the adjacent tracks. A few minutes later, the Yeshwantpur-Howrah Express train came on those tracks and collided with the derailed coaches.