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Several dozen injured after a collision between two trams in Strasbourg
Two trams collided in the tunnel under Strasbourg station on Saturday afternoon, an extremely rare accident which left several dozen injured. Firefighters reported around fifty injuries, all minor, and around a hundred people unharmed. The public prosecutor’s office announced that it had opened an investigation into unintentional injuries, which aims to “determine the causes of the accident and to highlight possible criminal responsibilities.” “The first investigations allowed to rule out the hypothesis of a voluntary act”, specified the interim public prosecutor, Alexandre Chevrier. A large security perimeter was established in front of the station, where numerous ambulances took up position. Injured people were evacuated on stretchers and others were taken care of under the station’s glass roof. A video obtained by AFP shows badly damaged trains, the ends of the colliding trams heavily depressed, and passengers on the ground. on the station platform.- “Brutal collision” -“What we know at this stage is that there was a brutal collision between two trams, on the platform, under the station,” declared the mayor ecologist Jeanne Barseghian, quickly present on site. “It was a frontal impact following a reversing of a tram whose causes I do not know,” she added. The accident occurred shortly before 4:00 p.m. “We don’t know why – human error, material problem, all that has to be verified – (the tram) did not manage to stay stuck and therefore started to move backwards”, detailed the president of the Strasbourg Transport Company (CTS), Patrick Maciejewski.”Several days will be necessary to restore circulation” of the trams at this station, indicated the CTS in a press release. “The tram backed up, the tram left at full speed towards the station, and all suddenly, on our way back, on our way back to the station, we realized that there was already another tram which had returned to the station. This tram was stopped, thank God,” testified Romaric Koumba, a passenger on one of the damaged trains. “When the tram collided with the other, the doors flew off,” he said. -he added.- “Especially traumatology” -“We have around fifty relative emergencies with non-vital injuries, wounds to the scalp, one or two fractures of the clavicle, a sprained knee, things like That. Especially traumatology”, explained the general controller René Cellier, director of the Bas-Rhin fire and rescue service. “We don’t have an absolute emergency, it could have been much more serious”, a- he emphasized again. “I was in the tram at a stop, there was a tram which came in reverse at full speed, there was a problem with the brakes and it rolled down the slope in reverse. Halles (the next stop, Editor’s note) to the central station. We heard a big big shock, a big boom,” Johan, a direct witness to the collision, who did not wish to give his last name, explained to the press. “The accident happened in the worst place on the network , in a tunnel, and in a very dense area since it is under the square in front of Strasbourg station”, notes Julien Joly, transport consultant at Wavestone. “The collision of two trams to my knowledge is rather rare, that happens very rarely”, explains again to AFP the expert, according to whom most tram accidents are collisions with vehicles. “But we can reassure users: it is a rather safe mode of transport because a tram travels at a maximum of 70 km/h in barrier-free areas. And in the city center the speed is limited to a maximum of 30 km/h in Strasbourg. So it remains a safe mode of transport,” adds Mr. Joly. Strasbourg was one of the first major French cities to have put a tram network back into service in 1994 and had already experienced an accident, in exactly the same place, at the end of October 1998. A tram had already collided with another in the tunnel under the station, an accident due to excessive speed of one of the two trains which had caused 17. injured.bur-av-jus-bdx/pta/vk
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