The President of Taiwan has pushed for a hasty investigation. This is coming after an express train derailed on a coastal tourist route, killing eighteen people as it sent sleeping passengers flying from their seats.
The crash on the popular east coastline injured another one hundred and eighty-seven people Sunday and left the Puyuma Express lying zig-zagged across the tracks in the island’s worst rail accident for a quarter of a century.
Among those dead, the youngest was nine years old. Two students aged twelve and thirteen from a junior high school in Taitung — where the train was headed — were also killed, according to the transport ministry.
Prosecutor Chiang Jen-yu said a task force and forensic units will determine whether the derailment was “an accident or human error”.
An official from the Taiwan Railways Administration said the train driver had reported a pressure device used for braking had malfunctioned 30 minutes before the accident, but that it should not have caused the train to go too fast.
