Railway accident in Rheinweiler

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In the railway accident in Rheinweiler, the Switzerland Express from Basel to Copenhagen ( D 370 ) derailed on July 21, 1971 at 1:10 p.m. on the Rhine Valley Railway in front of the entrance to Rheinweiler station : 23 people died, 121 were injured, some seriously.

Starting position

In the Rheinweiler area, the Rheintalbahn runs curvy on the slope edge of the Isteiner Klotz above the Upper Rhine Valley . One of these curves is just before the southern entrance to the Rheinweiler train station. Their radius is so narrow that there was a speed limit at 75 km / h.

The train consisted of an electric locomotive of the series 103 and eight cars . It left the Badischer Bahnhof in Basel on time and was about 75 percent occupied with 300 passengers.

the accident

The train drove at a speed of 140 km / h into the sharp right-hand bend in front of the Rheinweiler train station, which was only permitted for 75 km / h. The cause was initially suspected to be a defect in the AFB with the following sudden switchgear run-up. In several legal proceedings, however, the incapacity of the train driver , possibly a fit of weakness, at the time of the accident was taken as the probable cause. Due to the clearly excessive speed, the train derailed and was thrown tangentially to the left of the curve. One of the wagons destroyed a residential building on the route down to its foundations. A six-year-old boy died here, his mother and a man were seriously injured. Six of the eight wagons fell down a five-meter-high embankment, three were thrown onto an area between the railway embankment and state road 137a, one car remained on the road, the locomotive on a partially shattered residential building with the front half torn off was sunk halfway into the ground lying on your head.

consequences

A total of 23 people died, including the 52-year-old train driver , and 121 were injured. A disaster alarm was triggered for the emergency services in the area . Several hundred helpers from the Red Cross , the technical relief organization , rescue workers from Switzerland and France, the French military and the German armed forces with helicopters were on duty at the accident site; Prime Minister Hans Filbinger visited the site of the disaster with a helicopter.

Since some of the train's wagons had positioned themselves sideways and the superstructure was also badly damaged, the Rhine Valley Railway had to be closed. Long-distance trains were diverted via SNCF routes via Mulhouse and Strasbourg . There were considerable delays.

The public prosecutor's office in Freiburg began investigating the cause of the accident. On April 24, 1973, it closed an investigation against the Deutsche Bundesbahn, so that the surviving victims did not initially have to pay any compensation for pain and suffering due to the failure to provide evidence of guilt . According to the Lörracher lawyer Werner Heuer, who represented twelve victims with their pain and suffering claims in court, however, met the accusation of " organizational failures " on the railways to his colleague Peter Kopp from Freiburg called by setting complaint with the General Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe, "determine those responsible and to bring charges of negligent homicide and assault, ”but was unsuccessful. The judgment of the Federal Court of Justice issued on October 10, 1978 is considered fundamental with regard to the traffic safety obligations of railways in Germany. It contradicted the legal opinion of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court that the organs of DB had culpably violated their duty to maintain safety.

As a result of the accident , the German Federal Railroad equipped speed restrictions ( slow speed zones ) that were not ordered by main signals with punctual train control and shortened the response times of the safety driving circuit .

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b July 21, 2011, Jean-Claude Gerber, 20min.ch: The fatal frenzy of the “Switzerland Express” (July 24, 2016)
  2. ↑ Ralf Strittmatter: A crash, then silence. 50 years ago the Switzerland Express derailed in Rheinweiler with 300 passengers, 23 people died . In: Badische Zeitung . July 21, 2021, p. 3 ( Online [accessed July 21, 2021]).
  3. ↑ Documentation page on the Rheinweiler train accident with reports and photos
  4. ↑ Hans-Joachim Ritzau, Jürgen Höstel: The catastrophe scenes of the present = railway accidents in Germany, Vol. 2. Pürgen 1983. ISBN 3-921304-50-4 , p. 153, name 23 dead and 142 injured
  5. ↑ See judgment of the Freiburg im Breisgau regional court of November 21, 1972 (file number 7 O 281/72) ; Judgment of the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Court (IV Civil Senate in Freiburg) of May 5, 1977; each with details in the corresponding sections.
  6. ↑ Badische-zeitung.de , July 20, 2011, Patrik Müller: July 21, 1971 - Rheinweiler becomes a disaster area (For the location of the locomotive: Fig. 1/3; July 24, 2016)
  7. ↑ badische-zeitung.de , May 24, 2011, Michael Neubauer: The day when Rheinweiler experienced a disaster (July 24, 2016)
  8. ↑ spiegel.de , October 8, 1973: BUNDESBAHN: Risk with Sifa (July 24, 2016)
  9. ↑ wedebruch.de: Judgment of the BGH of October 10, 1978 (file number VI ZR 98 and 99/77).

Coordinates: 47 ° 42 ′ 27.2 ″  N , 7 ° 31 ′ 44.5 ″  E