Relatives of Amagasaki derailment victims allowed to view wreckage

[gmat]

From Japan Times:

 

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110208a6.html

 

Best wishes,

Grant

[Guest ___]

I still shutter thinking about that wreck. I had been over that line and around that curve a month to the day prior to the incident. Last year I had the misfortune to run over the line again by miscalculating my route. I had been routing myself around Osaka (Kobe) avoiding the line as much as possible.

[miyakoji]

Good post gmat, I hadn't read about this.  I avoid most of the English-language Japanese news feeds.

 

I had to go back to the Japanese Wikipedia to find this name that I couldn't remember, Ide Masataka.  According to things I had read at the time, he was a sort of company disciplinarian, which I still think is an absurd concept, is it a company or a junior high school?  It seems to me that such measures to coerce crews into strict punctuality are at odds with safety, and unfortunately the accident might be proof of that.

 

The English article that gmat linked to says the Kobe prosecutor's office had kept the cars until now as evidence to prosecute JR West execs.  Well, if I'm reading the wikipedia pages right, it looks like none of them have been convicted of anything at this time.  Ide, Kakiuchi Takeshi, and Nanya Shojiro were indicted last April but only Yamazaki Masao is currently on trial.  Ide's page says he's stonewalling the authorities.