One more railway accident, and once again preciouslives lost. We blame it, once again, on human failure or conspiracy if not the system. While there's no final word on what led to the disaster on early Monday morning, what we know for sure is that an anti-collision device (ACD) could have prevented many of the railway accidents. What happened to a plan to install ACDs in trains? Here is an excerpt from a detailed analysis of the railways mismanagement over the years, from the March 16-31 issue of Governance Now:

Safety Shocker

The most severe indictment of the railways is, however, on the safety front – that was borne out effectively by the serial accidents that we witnessed in late December and January. This brought most observers back to a promise Nitish Kumar made in his earlier budget speeches beginning February 2003 – that of installing the Konkan Railway (KR) developed and patented Raksha Kavach on all broad guage routes in India in a period of five years. The Raksha Kavach or ACD (anti-collision device) is an automatic braking system that communicates with trains moving around in close vicinity, railway stations and level crossings. The moment the device detects another train on the same track within a distance of three km it automatically applies brakes and brings the train to halt within 1.3 km. A study commissioned by IR itself in 2002 found that the ACD could avoid about 82% of the accidents that occur on IR.

The railways estimated in 2003-04 that it would take them about Rs 1,800 crore to implement this system all over the broad gauge network in a period of five years. The railway ministers repeated their promise year after year in budget speeches but dogged by bureaucratic delays and alleged interference of other lobbies, the ACD today covers just 1,736 km of the North East Frontier Railway.

The worst cut is of course the fact that the money required for this entire exercise is a mere three to four percent of the Rs 50,000 crore surplus the railways claims to have earned during 2004-09. But, yes, many more years shall be declared year of passenger safety.

Read the full analysis here.