The Train Crash That Exposed Japan’s Toxic Work Culture

on a spring morning in Japan a rapid commuter service train makes its last ever schedule [Music] stop not even three minutes later 107 people aboard this train would perish [Music] [Music] the time is 6:11 a.m. the location is Osaka and amagasaki Japan many of the train lines in the area are operated by the West Japan Railway company or Jr West for short its headquarters resides right here in Osaka but our journey starts at the company's hitan branch office where 23-year-old riro Takami wakes up and takes the departure roll call by 621 to begin his birthday he makes his way to his allocated train a 7c car 207 series electric unit and after having completed the startup procedure at 648 he drives the train to Honan station to pick up his first passengers of the day [Music] Takami departs the train from the station under the number 218s on the katamachi line to Matsui yamata station with no problems to report from here the train is driven as 5769 M back towards Honan to kobashi station during this trip however Takami accumulated 1 minute and 20 seconds of delay the same train now as 4469 M departs to amagasaki station 47 seconds behind schedule on this route just before Kashima station entering a curve the atsp or automatic train stop system was triggered which applied full service breaking the train entered the curve just under the speed limit of 65 km/ hour the train eventually made it to amagasaki station 50 seconds late the train was scheduled to stop for 4 minutes and was able to leave the station on time now heading to takarazuka station during this leg of the Train's Journey Takami had run a red light causing the ATS to apply emergency breaking halting the train Takami was supposed to report the incident to traffic control which he didn't the train arrives at takarazuka station 44 seconds late Takami prepares the train to make its way back towards amagasaki now as 541 a.m the train leaves the station 15 seconds late while nearing Itami station with a 34 second delay Takami activates the breaks too late despite the warnings in the camp he is forced to use the emergency break after the train passes the stopping point having overshot the station by 72 M and needing to back up the train is now 1 minute and 20 seconds behind schedule the conductor masatoshi Matsushita sitting at the other end of the train was called by Takami on the intertrain phone according to him Takami said something along the lines of will you forgive my mistake matushita wasn't able to answer as a passenger had just knocked on his window asking for an apology announcement which he made moments later he called traffic control to report the overrun their conversation was the following [Music] [Music] Meanwhile by driving on the edge of the speed limit Takami was able to bring the train back under the a minute behind however right here is where the Brak should have been applied at the latest since just ahead is a curve with a 70 km speed limit coming up and the train is currently traveling at [Music] 816 it is at this point that the train enters the Curve and no brakes have been applied still 4 seconds later traffic control would attempt to call Tamaki but by then it's too late [Music] [Music] rescue operations by the city Fire Department began as early as 6 minutes after the incident the teams began work on on the second car first since they had not initially realized that the first car had been completely embedded into the building's parking lot out of the 92 Souls on board this car 43 had lost their lives including the driver the car had been destroyed to a near unrecognizable State the second car had been crushed against the building of the 132 on board this car 57 died out of the over 100 people on the third car nearly all had sustained injuries and and three passed away the remaining cars had experienced no casualties however a total of 281 persons on them had been injured an additional four souls from cars that weren't indentified had passed away bringing the total death count to 107 and the total number of injured to 562 how was this allowed to happen the first key in understanding the cause of the disaster is to look at the train involved the 207 series is a Standard 7ar Electric unit which the company owned hundreds of with a top operating speed of 12 km/ hour great acceleration breaking and a capacity of 1,115 the train was optimized for getting as large a number of people as possible from A to B in a timely manner Hiroshi Kubota an expert who once worked for the National Railway stole a newspaper that quote the derail train has heavy air conditioning systems on to the roof of the cars that are just as heavy as the bottom frames of the cars that probably ambalance the cars and made them prone to topple this specific unit comprised of newer cars at the rear of the arrangement which had many devices installed including data recorders these recorded the precise state of the control surfaces over the course of the day like how Takami was late to start breaking at Itami station or how he had only applied braking in the Fatal Corner once the train already entered the curve the speed recorded in the corner was 116 kmph while the speed limit was 70 simulation showed that the train would have derailed going at any speed of 106 km/ hour but if the train was approaching well over the speed limit why did the ATS not trigger like it did previously in the day the reason for this is that this line picture in yellow here had the oldest ATS system installed by Jr West this old system did not have beacons in place for over speed knowing this the focus of the investigation of the accident became the driver why would someone be so fixated on trying to alleviate a delay as small as one or two minutes well you see when it comes to Transportation Japan is perfectionist it has become a standard in the country for trains to always be perfectly on time it is what the passengers expect as this is the case Railway companies also time their trains to meet at hubs for a quick transfer this was the exact case when someone asked Matsushita to apologize for the delay since they knew that they would be late for a transfer at amagasaki station even still why risk derailment just what consequences could there be for being late this is where we will discover that Japan isn't as perfect as it seems from the outside the perfectionism comes with a price and it's not cheap the troubling statistics of workers with mental health issues in Japan has been slowly moving into the foreground but many are still not aware of the extent to which the average Japanese person is pushed to in their daily life take Takami for example he had worked the previous day from 1:00 p.m. till 11:00 p.m. his co-workers at the huntan office said in an interview that he looked normal nothing seemed off or different about him they were actually having a conversation about who was going to get better sleep since some of them were waking up at 4 a.m. this was just before midnight Takami was waking up at 600 and just like most of his cowork ERS he skipped shower to have more time for a train driver in Japan this was a normal day the real nightmare begins when you are assigned to retraining Nick and QQ literally translated to dayshift education is a retraining program Jr West would make a driver take as a punishment for being late but there was no retraining here instead drivers would be subjected to severe verbal abuse and forced to write reports repenting their mistakes furthermore they would be placed on video leing and grass cutting duties during the day this program was seen by many as psychological torture Takami himself had been on the program three times and it is highly likely that leading off to the event of the crash he was trying to avoid going back you may have noticed in the call to traffic control that mosita had reported an overrun at Itami much shorter than in reality hoping to ease the possible penalties for Takami unfortunately for him when they were talking on the intertrain phone and Takami asked will you overlook my mistake mosito wasn't able to answer due to the passenger knocking on his window he said after the accident that Takami might have thought the phone was hung up because the conductor is [Music] mad the official investigation concluded the direct cause of the accident to be the delay and applying brakes when entering the corner and the indirect cause to be the company's driver management system and the avoidance of its disciplinary actions to divert the driver's attention from driving the train at the time the company thought that pursuing the individual's responsibility for an error would prevent recurrence so we were carrying out disciplinary action and retraining program that could be perceived as a penalty against Personnel this led to Personnel directing their attention toward covering up and making excuses for errors which resulted in a situation that opened the door door to accidents as opposed to preventing human errors in June of 2005 2 months after the accident masak kaida adviser of Jr West who played a major role in enforcing the strict punctuality resigned followed by the company's chairman in August the company hasn't brushed the accident under the carpet their website homepage also makes clear mention of the disaster they caused accountability is one thing however taking action is another the company has supposedly undergone restructuring to focus on safety and the human factor but I am not so sure that the Japanese mentality is that easy to get rid of is history bound to repeat itself has Jrs gone through actual growth or are there actions just window dressing I don't know but I can't help but wonder whether progress was made or are we still living the world where 541m rounded the curve successfully for

Channel: Worlds In Motion

Views: 1,807,551

Keywords: train, crash, derailment, catastrophe, japan, 3d, animation, documentary, seconds from disaster

Id: eLh_4uvNA9g

Length: 13min 13sec (793 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2024