“From the reading of the report, it is evident that no failure in the functioning of the infrastructure was found. The existing signaling at the Soure Station, in terms of location and visibility, fully complies with current technical and regular regulations and, at the time of the accident, it worked as planned, “stressed IP in a press release sent to Lusa.

According to the same note, “following the disclosure by the Office for the Prevention and Investigation of Accidents with Aircraft and Railway Accidents (GPIAAF)” of the “Safety Investigation Report” concerning the collision of accidents that occurred at the Soure station, “also remains It is clear that the Rail Vehicle (VCC105) was equipped with all the systems and equipment defined by the applicable rules and regulations ​​”.

For an IP, the document also demonstrates that “IP employees, who unfortunately lost their lives in this accident, had the legally required training and certification to carry out their duties”.

The company stressed that “all IP workers who perform the duties of machinists have a legal certification required for this purpose and frequent retraining training actions that meet the parameters defined in the applicable applicable law”.

“It is noteworthy that, at IP, all workers who perform the function of monitoring agent have the license of a driver, whose training is more covered than that provided for a monitoring agent, which means that Special Motor Vehicles (VME) in circulation, there are always two employees with driver certification on board”, the statement also reads.

The company also recalled that “in the days following the accident in Soure”, it adopted “as additional safety measures to mitigate human error”, “a set of complementary rules and procedures for the circulation of VMEs on an open line for circulation”.

One of the rules was the communication by communication to the Operational Command Center of the opening of the signal that allowed the vehicle to proceed.”

According to an IP, from the analysis of the history (only available since November 2007) of “train passage in a situation similar to that of the accident (sample with 2,595 trains stopping on line III of Soure, in the last 12 years), there is no records of misinterpretation of the respective trips in relation to signs S5 and S3 at the place of the accident”.

The train, with 212 passengers and heading south-north, bound for Braga, derailed in the afternoon of July 31, 2020, after colliding with a catenary conservation vehicle (VCC), which had entered the track, seconds earlier, near the town of Matas, causing the death of two IP workers, who were at the VCC, and 44 wounded, three of which were tombs.

“The accident was not due to any technical anomaly, establishing as the most likely explanation for the undue overrun of signal S5 [vermelho] by the VCC, an error by the crew in the identification of the signal that related to the line the train was on, having understood that the S3 signal with a green appearance was applied to the passage of fast train no. 133 [Alfa Pendular]”, concluded the GPIAAF in the report released today.

In addition to the “probable error” in the interpretation of the signal by the VCC, an investigation also points out as a contributing factor to the accident, among others, the fact that this maintenance vehicle is not equipped with the automatic speed control system (CONVEL).