Train Collision in Malaysia Injures Over 200 People - The New York Times
More than 200 people were injured in Malaysia’s largest city, Kuala Lumpur, on Monday when a train full of passengers collided head-on in a tunnel with another train on a test run, the authorities said.
A preliminary investigation indicated that the collision occurred because the driver operating the test was going the wrong direction, Malaysia’s transportation minister, Wee Ka Siong, told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
The trains were traveling at speeds of 12 to 25 miles an hour when they crashed on Monday evening. The authorities said all 213 passengers were hurt, including 47 who suffered serious injuries. No fatalities were reported.
Hours after the crash, Malaysia’s prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin, called for a “full investigation” in a post on his Facebook page. “I take this accident seriously,” he said.
Photos and videos of the scene posted on social media showed injured passengers lying on the floor of the train and others lying on stretchers outside as paramedics treated them and put them in ambulances. Many other passengers sat nearby. Several had their heads wrapped in bandages.
Mr. Wee, the transportation minister, said that the accident was the first head-on collision in the 23-year history of the city’s Light Rail Transit system.
The trains are automated and typically operate without a driver. But the train that was on a test run, identified as TR40, was under the control of a driver, the only person aboard.
“Preliminary investigations indicate that the accident was the result of carelessness of the hostler who drove TR40 in the wrong direction,” said Mr. Wee, referring to the driver.
The authorities said earlier in the day that they would investigate whether there was a mistake made at the light rail command center.
“We are still investigating the incident,” Mohamad Zainal Abdullah, the police chief of the district where the collision occurred, told reporters, “but we suspect that perhaps there was a miscommunication from the trains’ operation control center.”
The accident occurred near Kuala Lumpur City Center, an upscale area filled with shops and restaurants, and the Petronas Towers, the city’s best-known landmark and at one point the world’s tallest building. The twin towers, the city center complex and the light rail system were key elements of Kuala Lumpur’s modernization in the late 1990s under the former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad.
The trains began operating again on Tuesday morning.
One injured passenger, Afiq Luqman Mohd Baharudin, 27, said the impact threw many passengers to the floor. The train had stopped for about 15 minutes and had just begun moving again when the collision occurred, he told the government media outlet, Bernama.
“We had only moved for a few seconds when the crash happened, and the impact was so strong that I suffered injuries to my head, left leg and chest,” he said.
Mr. Wee told Channel News Asia that he would create a task force to investigate the crash and expected a preliminary report in two weeks.
“This is something that is out of the ordinary and it is not supposed to happen,” he said. “Is it signaling, or system, or complications, or human error? A special task force will be formed and its objective is to determine the exact cause of the collision.”