Cortabitarte blames the driver of the Alvia: “If he had braked 4 seconds earlier, we wouldn’t be here”

The former security director of Adif has based his defense on holding the train driver responsible for what happened, Andrés Cortabitarte has assured that he did not have the power to assess the risk of the line “The cause of the accident is the driver’s failure to speed,” he assured in the trial The planned script was fulfilled. The former head of Adif Security, Andrés Cortabitarte, has placed all the responsibility for the derailment of the Alvia train, which occurred on July 24, 2013 in Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña), on the driver. The former senior Adif official has defended that the cause of the accident in which 80 people died was due solely to the excessive speed of Francisco José Garzón Amo. “If he had braked four seconds earlier we wouldn’t be here,” he told the prosecutor during his interrogation. Cortabitarte has evaded his responsibility as the head of Adif’s safety at the time the road was put into operation, assuring that he did not have the power to assess the risks that existed on line 082. He has also defended that the line was “100 % safe”. After and also before the accident. His statement came on the third day of the trial that is being held in the Galician capital for that tragedy that cost the lives of 80 people and left 144 injured. The former Adif senior official and the driver are the only two accused of the tragedy. Without competencies to analyze the risk of the road As expected, Cortabitarte’s interrogation has been much longer and more technical than that of the driver. He has been for almost an hour and a half answering the prosecutor’s questions. With a string of arguments and technical explanations, Cortabitarte has defended that he did not have the competence to carry out a risk analysis of the line. “As a security directorate, we interpret the regulations that exist on the regulation and we enable security personnel and the investigation and reconstruction of accidents, but we do not evaluate or analyze the risks,” he assured. The prosecutor has reminded him that it was he who issued a line safety certificate, without which the train would not have been able to enter service. “It is one of the eight certificates that are issued there. It’s one more. They are all necessary ”, he has maintained, downplaying his certification. “The only thing the security department does in this work is that the CENELEC regulations have been complied with in the control, command and signalling. It only certifies that the CENELEC regulations have been complied with”, he insisted. Cortabitarte has assured that in the railway network Spanish there are many curves equal to that of Angrois. “It was not a peculiar curve,” he insisted. “There are 1,800 in Spain with those characteristics or even worse,” he pointed out, with the intention of making it clear that the curve would not be dangerous if the driver had respected the speed. About the train driver’s phone call: “You can’t do that, it’s illegal” After making these clarifications, Cortabitarte has placed all responsibility for the accident on the train driver, having traveled at 191 kilometers per hour in a curve limited to 80 It has done so by maintaining that with the ASFA system –operative after the disconnection of the ERTMS-, speed control depended on it. “The cause of the accident is the driver’s failure to comply with the speed at which he had to circulate,” he defended. Cortabitarte has alluded to the training and “great experience” of Francisco José Garzón Amo as a train driver. “He shouldn’t have circulated at that speed like the rest of his teammates do,” he insisted. As he explained, 8,900 trains had circulated around the Angrois curve without incident before this derailment occurred. Cortabitarte has also made reference to the phone call from the inspector that the driver answered just before the train derailed. “The driver has been talking for 100 seconds at the most important point on the line,” he has said. “That cannot be done, it is illegal”, he has sentenced. Adif’s former director of security has insisted that this call caused him not to slow down in time. “If he had braked four seconds earlier, we wouldn’t be here,” he told the prosecutor. “The regulation did not provide for the signaling of the curve” On the lack of signaling that existed on the road, Cortabitarte has insisted that the beacons were not mandatory at the time the accident occurred. “The regulation did not provide for the signaling of the curve with a beacon”, he pointed out to the prosecutor. However, he has admitted that after the accident everything changed. “Why was this risk not seen before?”, questioned the prosecutor, who has highlighted the passive action that Adif’s security management had in the security control of the line. Regarding the change from the ERTMS system to ASFA, Cortabitarte has assured that 195 ERTMS disconnections were made in Spain. Although he has initially defended that both systems are safe, he has ended up admitting that the first is more so. On why it was decided to deactivate ERTMS, the system that according to reports would have prevented the accident, Cortabitarte has assured that it “failed” and that it was safer to deactivate it. Andrés Cortabitarte reveals that 140 inspections were carried out on the line and that no risk was observed in any of them. “Was the line secure?” the prosecutor asked. “The line was 100% safe, otherwise we would not have put it into operation,” he defended.