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Automatic stop technology halted the TGV from Paris to Saint-Étienne after the driver apparently took his own life
More than 400 passengers were on board a high-speed train near Paris on Christmas Eve when the driver opened his door and apparently jumped off, leaving the passengers to speed away at 186mph.
But within half a minute, the train’s controls averted disaster: they detected the driver’s absence and brought it to a halt 1.5 miles down the track by Melun, 25 miles south of the capital.
Railway staff on Train 6689 of the low-cost Ouigo service from Paris to Saint-Étienne described the alarm on board the carriages — packed with people heading home for France’s midnight celebrations of Christmas — which followed.
As trains up and down the line were slowed and halted, no contact could be made with the driver, who had been alone, locked in his cabin. The train personnel assumed that he was incapacitated. “We really couldn’t understand what had happened,” one said. “No one imagined the worst,” one told Le Parisien.
After 15 minutes a ticket inspector walked up the track, forced open the driver’s door from the outside and found the cabin empty. For more than two hours, emergency service personnel searched the dark line with torches. The driver’s body was spotted eventually by a fire service infra-red drone.
The incident, which happened at 9pm and paralysed trains for three hours on the north-south network, affecting 10,000 passengers, was ascribed to an act of apparent suicide by Bruno Rejony, the 52-year-old driver.
Philippe Tabarot, the transport minister, said Rejony had been suffering from personal problems and he praised the automatic train protection system that brought the 300km/h train to a safe stop.
Suicides are common in the Christmas period but it was the first time in the SNCF’s history that a driver had jumped to his death from a speeding train, Tabarot said. “The driver wished to end his life in a solitary action. It could have been more serious if he had wanted to derail his train,” the minister added on CNews television.
The high-speed trains are equipped with a modern version of the dead man’s handle, the fail-safe switches first used on electric trams in the early 20th century. The TGV’s “automatic vigilance system” requires constant pressure on a pedal or handle. If pressure is released, an alarm sounds after about 50 yards. If there is no response from the driver, emergency braking is applied after another 50 yards. In addition, the driver must perform actions on the controls at regular intervals covering about once per mile. If alerts are ignored, emergency braking is applied.
More than 400 passengers were on board a high-speed train near Paris on Christmas Eve when the driver opened his door and apparently jumped off, leaving the passengers to speed away at 186mph.
But within half a minute, the train’s controls averted disaster: they detected the driver’s absence and brought it to a halt 1.5 miles down the track by Melun, 25 miles south of the capital.
Railway staff on Train 6689 of the low-cost Ouigo service from Paris to Saint-Étienne described the alarm on board the carriages — packed with people heading home for France’s midnight celebrations of Christmas — which followed.
As trains up and down the line were slowed and halted, no contact could be made with the driver, who had been alone, locked in his cabin. The train personnel assumed that he was incapacitated. “We really couldn’t understand what had happened,” one said. “No one imagined the worst,” one told Le Parisien.
After 15 minutes a ticket inspector walked up the track, forced open the driver’s door from the outside and found the cabin empty. For more than two hours, emergency service personnel searched the dark line with torches. The driver’s body was spotted eventually by a fire service infra-red drone.
The incident, which happened at 9pm and paralysed trains for three hours on the north-south network, affecting 10,000 passengers, was ascribed to an act of apparent suicide by Bruno Rejony, the 52-year-old driver.
Philippe Tabarot, the transport minister, said Rejony had been suffering from personal problems and he praised the automatic train protection system that brought the 300km/h train to a safe stop.
Suicides are common in the Christmas period but it was the first time in the SNCF’s history that a driver had jumped to his death from a speeding train, Tabarot said. “The driver wished to end his life in a solitary action. It could have been more serious if he had wanted to derail his train,” the minister added on CNews television.
The high-speed trains are equipped with a modern version of the dead man’s handle, the fail-safe switches first used on electric trams in the early 20th century. The TGV’s “automatic vigilance system” requires constant pressure on a pedal or handle. If pressure is released, an alarm sounds after about 50 yards. If there is no response from the driver, emergency braking is applied after another 50 yards. In addition, the driver must perform actions on the controls at regular intervals covering about once per mile. If alerts are ignored, emergency braking is applied.
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