Amagasaki derailment

The train involved was train number 5418M, a limited-stop "Rapid" commuter service from Takarazuka Station to Dōshishamae Station. It was a seven-car 207 series electric multiple unit (EMU) formation consisting of a four-car set and a three-car set coupled together as shown below, with Car 1 leading. The train was carrying approximately 700 passengers at the time of the accident.^[1]

The front four cars derailed completely, with the first car ramming into the parking lot of the apartment building and the second car colliding into the external wall of the building becoming almost completely compacted by the third and fourth cars, which were themselves pushed from the rear by the fifth car.^[1]

Investigators primarily focused on the speeding by the 23-year-old driver, later identified as being the most likely cause of the derailment. Twenty-five minutes before the derailment, the driver had run a red signal, causing the automatic train stop (ATS) to bring the train to a halt.^[2] The train had also overshot the correct stopping position at an earlier stop at Itami Station with more than 3 carriages, requiring him to back up the train, and resulting in a 90-second delay,^[1] about four minutes before the disaster.^[2] By the time the train passed Tsukaguchi Station at a speed of 120 km/h (75 mph), the delay had been reduced to 60 seconds.^[1]

Investigators speculate that the driver may have been trying to make up this lost time by increasing the train's speed beyond customary limits. Many reports from surviving passengers indicate that the train was traveling at a faster than normal speed. Furthermore, it is speculated that the driver may have felt stressed because he would have been punished for the two infractions, and may have not been totally focused on driving. Ten months before the crash, the driver had been reprimanded by the train's operator, the West Japan Railway Company (JR West), for overshooting a station platform by 100 metres (330 ft).^[2]

JR West is very strict when it comes to punctuality,^[3] and commuters often depend on near-perfect timing on the part of trains to commute to and from work on time. This is because at JR West stations (including the derailed train's next scheduled stop at Amagasaki Station) trains meet on both sides of the same platform to allow people to transfer between rapid and local trains running on the same line. As a result, a small delay in one train can cascade through the timetable for the rest of the day due to the tightness of the schedule. Immediately after the crash occurred, some of the mass media pointed to the congested schedule of the Fukuchiyama Line as an indirect factor. Cumulative changes over the previous three years had reduced the leeway in the train's schedule from 71 to 28 seconds over the fifteen minutes between Takarazuka and Amagasaki stations.

Drivers for JR West face financial penalties for lateness as well as being forced into harsh and humiliating retraining programs known as nikkin kyōiku (日勤教育, "dayshift education"), which include weeding and grass-cutting duties during the day.^[4][5] The final report officially concluded that the retraining system was one probable cause of the crash.^[6] This program consisted of severe verbal abuse, forcing the employees to repent by writing extensive reports. Many experts saw the process of nikkin kyōiku as punishment and psychological torture, not retraining.^[2] The driver had also received a non-essential phone call from the general control station at the time that he was rounding the bend.^[7]

The speed limit on the segment of track where the derailment happened was 70 km/h (43 mph). The data recorder in the rear of the train (the rear cars were new and equipped with many extra devices) showed that the train was moving at 116 km/h (72 mph) at that point. Investigators ran a series of simulations and calculated that the train would derail on that curve if going over 106 km/h (66 mph). It has been speculated that the driver was so stressed about the inevitability of going back to nikkin kyōiku due to his prior infractions that morning, that he did not notice that the train was going too fast. When the driver did notice, four seconds before the derailment, he used the service brake instead of the emergency brake, presumably to avoid another infraction as using the emergency brake had to be justified.^[2]

Japanese building codes do not regulate the distance between train lines and residential buildings due to high confidence in the engineering of the rail system. As a result, railway lines often pass close to residential buildings in metropolitan areas.

Amongst other things, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport instructed railway operators on 27 May 2005 to install automatic train stop systems with curve speed-checking functions, so that trains would brake automatically if they approached sharp curves too fast, and in March 2006 amended the ministerial ordinance on technical standards (effective 1 July 2006) to require the installation of such speed-limiting devices.^{[8]: 249 [9]}

It is believed that a contributing factor in the accident was JR West's policy of schedule punctuality. As a result, Masataka Ide, a JR West adviser and former president and chairman of the company who played a major role in enforcing the punctuality of its trains, announced in May 2005 that he would resign the following month. President Takeshi Kakiuchi and chairman Shojiro Nanya also indicated that they would step down once compensation had been agreed with victims and their families and a programme of safety improvements was under way.^[10]

The section where the crash occurred, between Amagasaki and Takarazuka stations, was re-opened for service on 19 June 2005. The maximum speed between Takarazuka and Amagasaki was reduced from 120 to 95 km/h (75 to 59 mph), and the speed limit on the curve at the accident site from 70 to 60 km/h (43 to 37 mph).^[8]: 249

According to information provided by the Hyōgo Prefecture police, 43 of the 107 deaths, including the driver, occurred in the first car; 57 occurred in the second car; and three occurred in the third car. The cars in which the remaining four passengers had been riding could not be determined.^{[8]: 30–33}

On 26 December 2005, Takeshi Kakiuchi resigned from the presidency of JR West, intending to take responsibility for the accident. Kakiuchi's successor was Masao Yamazaki, who had previously served as the railway's vice president, based in Osaka. Kakiuchi's resignation came one day after another serious accident on JR East, though officials at the railway did not make any explicit connection between the accident and the resignation.^[11][12]

• Lists of rail accidents

• Brakeless, a 2014 Peabody Award winning documentary film on the accident by Kyoko Miyake.^[13]
• Featured on National Geographic's show: Seconds from Disaster. (S06E07, "Runaway Train")^[14]