The Mexico City Prosecutor’s Office has reported this Friday the arrest of Carlos Alfredo N, the train driver who, first, was going above the permitted speed and second, did not brake before hitting the train that was stopped between the stations Potrero and La Raza on Line 3 of the Mexico City Metro. Carlos Alfredo has been accused of the crimes of homicide and intentional injuries for the crash that caused 106 injuries and the death of a young woman. The other cause that the Prosecutor’s Office has exposed to explain the incident is the burning and intentional cutting of cables located in two registers that contained electrical wiring “for communications, signaling and automatic piloting” at the Potrero station.
This incident was reported the day before to the Metro authorities. During the early hours of Saturday, maintenance personnel showed up at the closure of the service in the area. They made the diagnosis and detected enormous material damage caused by the deliberate burning of cables in one of the registers located at the Potrero station, according to the Prosecutor’s Office report. The staff indicated that the normalization of the service would take several days, so, in order not to interrupt the provision of the service while they carried out the repair, the Central Control Post established for driving in “safety march” mode for that section, which consists of : Do not exceed 15 kilometers per hour in curves and 35 kilometers per hour in straight lines, and do not exit manual mode without authorization.
Carlos Alfredo N, who had previously made a return on Line 3, “did not adhere to the guidelines contained in his technical manuals,” according to the information obtained by the Prosecutor’s Office from the black boxes of both trains. Train number 24, driven by the detainee, left Potrero at 9.05 in restricted manual driving. Halfway there, the driver exceeded the speed limit of 35 km/h and was immediately pulled over by the train system. Later, Carlos Alfredo N changes the driving mode to “automatic driving” without informing the security post and increases the speed to 45 kilometers per hour, 10 kilometers above what is allowed.
The Prosecutor’s Office ensures that “there is no evidence”, after analyzing the black box, that Carlos Alfredo N slowed down or slowed down before hitting train 23 that was stopped in front. The agency has not indicated any reason why the driver acted in this way, exceeded the speed limit and collided without braking first against the other train.
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