The Aviation Safety Council (ASC) in August is to be restructured and designated as a national transportation safety council, responsible for investigating major transportation accidents, which could include the deadly Puyuma train crash in October last year, it said on Thursday.
The Legislative Yuan this month passed an amendment to the Organic Law of the Aviation Safety Council (飛航安全調查委員會組織法) to transform the agency, which is currently tasked with investigating aviation accidents, into a body that probes marine, railway, highway and aviation transportation accidents.
The amendment came after 18 people were killed and 210 injured in the derailment of eastbound Puyuma Express Train No. 6432 near Sinma (新馬) Train Station in Yilan County on Oct. 21 last year, the deadliest railway accident in Taiwan in nearly three decades.
Photo: Chu Pei-hsiung, Taipei Times
ASC Chairman Young Hong-tsu (楊宏智), who has a background in engineering, said that once the new council begins operations, its first order of business would be whether to begin a new investigation of the derailment.
It is highly likely the investigation will be reopened, as the report released by the Cabinet’s investigation task force in November last year was insufficiently comprehensive and widely questioned, Young said.
If a new investigation is launched, it would involve a full-scale inspection of all Puyuma express trains and the entire Taiwan Railways Administration system using a more rigorous scientific methodology to better determine what caused the derailment, he said.
The report on the incident presented by the Cabinet was based on insufficient evidence due to the low sophistication of on-site investigative mechanisms, he said.
Furthermore, the report concluded that the cause was speeding, but failed to explore the reasons for the speeding, he said.
TENSIONS: The Chinese aircraft and vessels were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a joint air and sea military exercise, the Ministry of National Defense said A relatively large number of Chinese military aircraft and vessels were detected in Taiwan’s vicinity yesterday morning, apparently en route to a Chinese military exercise in the western Pacific, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. In a statement, the ministry said 36 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft, including J-16 fighters and nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait or an extension of it, and were detected in the southern and southeastern parts of Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) from 5:20am to 9:30am yesterday. They were headed toward the western Pacific to take part in a
Honor guards are to stop performing changing of the guard ceremonies around a statue of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) to avoid “worshiping authoritarianism,” the Ministry of Culture said yesterday. The fate of the bronze statue has long been the subject of fierce and polarizing debate in Taiwan, which has transformed from an autocracy under Chiang into one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies. The changing of the guard each hour at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei is a major tourist attraction, but starting from 9am on Monday, the ceremony is to be moved outdoors to Democracy Boulevard, outside the eponymous blue-and-white memorial
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) supports peaceful unification with China, and President William Lai (賴清德) is “a bit naive” for being a “practical worker for Taiwanese independence,” former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) said in an interview published yesterday. Asked about whether the KMT is on the same page as the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on the issue of Taiwanese independence or unification with China, Ma told the Malaysian Chinese-language newspaper Sin Chew Daily that they are not. While the KMT supports peaceful unification and is against unification by force, the DPP opposes unification as such and
The government would cancel kendo practitioner Su Yu-cheng’s (蘇郁程) nationality if he is confirmed to have represented China in the World Kendo Championships in Milan, Italy, last week, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday. “We have consulted the Sports Administration and were told that athletes participating in the championships must have the nationality of the country that they represent. They must also present their passports as proof,” council spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) told a weekly news conference. “If Su indeed represented China in the championships, we suspect that he has obtained Chinese nationality.” The Act Governing Relations Between the People of the