Great Western Coffee Shop

A truly horrible accident being reported by the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/24/spain-train-teenagers-killed) and the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10399126.stm) (and no doubt other news sources too), in which an express train cut through a crowd of people crossing over the line rather than being delayed a few minutes by using the busy subway. Twelve young people died as a result.

There seems to be a terrifying lack of awareness of the dangers of their actions, judging by some of the quotes from people at the scene, such as "The door was closed and we could not get through, so we tried to go through the side of the train, and there was no light and nobody alerted us that the train was coming. We were more than 30 people.", "The train did not blow its whistle until it was already in the station and that gave us no time to get out of the way," and "What I do not understand is why the train did not stop after the accident,". It just doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody that a high-speed intercity train would not be able to stop instantly. Very very sad indeed.

Horrible indeed.  Sadly the more cavalier attitude towards crossing the tracks in mainland Europe has been highlighted in this incident.  This is not helped by the low platforms at many stations and as Blakey says, the lack of awareness in people these days.

I know some people won't like this comment but the first thing that springs to mind is......

Darwin award candidates

And as they are teenagers hopefully they have not passed their genes onto the next generation