Circuit Flaws Blamed For China Train Crash 103
hackingbear writes "The Xinhua news agency reports that a signaling equipment circuit design flaw and lack of safety alertness in railway management caused a high-speed train to ram into a stalled train near the city of Wenzhou in east China's Zhejiang Province on Saturday, leaving 40 people dead and 191 injured. A lightning strike triggered the malfunction, which resulted in a green alert light failing to turn red, leaving railway personnel unaware of the stalled train, the official said. The Beijing National Railway Research and Design Institute of Signal and Communication Co., which was responsible for designing and building the signaling system, has posted an apology letter on its website, offering condolences and promising to 'shoulder any due punishments that may result from the investigation.' Domestic media has raised more questions over the explanation. 'Why was such seriously flawed equipment in use for nearly two years without being detected? Why was it installed in as many as 76 rail stations across the country? Are there other problems with the railway apart from equipment flaws?'"
Who to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem in China is not the rush forward that leads to mistakes. It's the government's abject failure to take responsibility at any step along the path.
Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was such seriously flawed equipment in use for nearly two years without being detected?
Because it hadn't been struck by lightning until now.
Why was it installed in as many as 76 rail stations across the country?
Because hardware designs are re-used.
Are there other problems with the railway apart from equipment flaws?
Probably.
Re:Who to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as the engineers are allowed to approach it from the "let's fix the problem" angle, it should probably turn out alright (in the future). It really depends on how the government responds to public outcry.
Re:Schadenfreude (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Because (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it hadn't been struck by lightning until now.
Life-critical systems should have a dead-man switch, and/or a watchdog timer. The moment it was struck by lightning, the fact that part of the system didn't "report back" should have prevented the train from moving. If the lightning strike happened while the train was moving, then it should have triggered a mechanism that slows down the train to a halt.This is similar to how, if an elevator's power is cut, it expands "claws" into safety rails.
Re:Who to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
It does appear that there is a tipping point being reached here. The media, even state-run media, is becoming bolder, and the Chinese leadership seemingly less willing to just smash skulls to get rid of bad news. Fifty years ago, most Chinese people would not have even heard of the rail accident, and those that did would have kept their mouths shut. Now, suddenly, you have journalists openly demanding heads roll and demanding to know why the government what they believe to be a faulty system be installed.
Of course, it doesn't help that the propaganda wing of the Chinese government was caught red handed sending dictates to news outlets to only report positive news surrounding the accident. That's another amazing thing, that people who leaked such dictates are still walking and talking.
Re:Because (Score:4, Insightful)
EOS failures can do funny things. Single IOs can fail while the rest of the chip works fine.
That's possible, which is why you should install independent, redundant systems. Some problems are very difficult to catch, even with redundant systems, which is all the more reason to have multiple redundancy.
This sounds like it's more a problem with their safety protocols, and less a problem with the particular circuit that failed.
That's always possible, but I still think that diagnostic/sensor circuits should have been able to catch this without human intervention (IMHO).