Predictably, I was not the least amused by the accident between CRH trains D301 and D3115. I’m not not taking the claims that a T-storm started this thing, but I sure hoped this would have never happened.

However, what has happened — well, happened, and there’s little to zilch we can do about it. Unlike Macs, railways don’t come with an Undo command: if they crashed, they crashed, end of argument.

As probably China’s most well known HSR “guy” (or rider or ‘expert’), I’ve been interviewed, most lately when the state-of-the-art Beijing-Shanghai HSR opened. Most ironically, train D301 finished the whole stretch of that very HSR line with no problems at all. So it’s the accelerated non-HSR stretches that might have a little soul thinking to do. When stuff like this happens, you don’t shut up: you come out with your two cents.

So here goes:

1. This should have never happened. Period.
2. It happened. Okkie… come out with the truth!
3. People are dying. Save ‘em!

Here’s from what I’ve posted on Sina Weibo about the incident (translated from Chinese tweets):

• First, a moment of silence for those who died, and condolences to families hit by this. It should have never happened.
• What happened isn’t enough to destroy the Chinese HSR world. You cannot objectively drag the whole HSR world into the rhetoric netherworld and say China’s HSR is crap.
• This accident has no effect on my Railways First travel policy. I’m still not going by planes for domestic travel in China.
• The railway authorities have to make sure riders get from A to B in one piece. If safety isn’t top-notch, tighten it.
• Yes, the international media will make a huge deal of it. Let’s stay objective. They will attack China, the trains, the political system, the corruption, the shadier sides of “Leapfrog Liu”. Too bad. Thing is, this kind of yellow journalism won’t beget a lot of well-informed readers. Ever wonder why News of the World died? A fair number of us still want full-length, high quality journalism.
• Those involved in the crash today must be fully investigated. If the rail boss messed up, he should be investigated; ditto to the “working staff” (in rail Chinglish) in the train who botched up. The boss should get no favours. If criminal law red lines were crossed, well, prosecute them.
• The railways must come clean and be transparent about all this. The government as a whole should take action should the railways ministry fall short on this.
• Heads of the railway authorities should be held accountable if the need arises for them to be held responsible. If you need to fire people, fire them; if you need to demote someone, go ahead; if there’s a need to punish folks, do that. The people have a right to an answer that’s not encoded in vague-ese. The railways must continue operating trains at standards that guarantee, as a most basic requirement, that Joe Bloggs gets from A to B in one piece while on board.

Let’s hope this is the last time we hear this kind of news.