Comment by shevy-java

Quite a tragedy.

Spain needs to rethink the way it operates trains. I think Switzerland handles this better, overall, though they probably also don't have as many fast trains because there are so many mountains. But I refer more to the intrinsic quality control and assumption made. If I recall correctly in Spain, there was the other train also coming in. I am sure they could have built the tracks differently. Granted, the issue here is cost, and an attempt to keep the cost down, but if you then accept disasters like that, it seems really awkward to me to want to save money here. And now that we know the track was already damaged, that just adds more validity to questioning whether the quality control systems were overall proper.