Note that in this particular case two trains belonging to a small regional short distance company collided.<p>I have relatives working for "Die Bahn"^, which is the actual national train company. And i can tell you that this kind of thing is a direct result of the privatization of the train industry in germany. First it simply resulted in less quality in transport, with money being saved on the maintenance of non-critical parts, such that i.e. one car per train may have non-functioning air control.<p>Now small unaffiliated transport companies have sprung up to cover very short distance trips on budgets just as short. The result is what you have in the article.<p>The only good news is that as of yet, travelling with Die Bahn is still safe, since they at least spend a lot of money on training and maintenance of critical parts.<p>^pronounced "dee bahn", meaning "The Rail"
As a European I consider trains to be the most comfortable way of traveling available today.
Planes have these awkward boarding procedures and trains, even in economy, have nice amounts of moving space.<p>It is so mind-boggling to me how train-to-train crashes can occur. You can naively assume this must be one of the easier things to prevent. Especially in a highly developed country like Germany.<p>Does this mean train infrastructure (in Europe) is so outdated? Or why does this seem to happen fairly often?<p><i>Edit:</i> According to the Wikipedia list mentioned below there seems to be a train-to-train collision about every 2 years in (Western) Europe. Let's not focus on whether that is a lot or not, but what generalizations can be made about their causes.
"Someone screwed up"
On today's railways, it is very difficult, deliberate action excepted, for one error to cause an accident of this magnitude. Most modern railway accidents occur following an unfortunate combination of coincidental events and\or procedural breakdowns. Technology and procedures have evolved over the years to ensure that one mistake cannot lead to such an event. Railway authorities are no longer complacent and reactive in their application of safety measures as they once were.