S-Bahn doors closing system declared unsafe

Dress warmly, commuters: The automatic door system employed by the Munich S-Bahn has been declared unsafe by the Federal Train Authority (Eisenbahn-Bundesamt) and has been deactivated. The doors will remain open until the driver has ascertained that it is safe to close them, i.e. no one is likely to get stuck in the closing door.

The Eisenbahn-Bundesamt quotes various accidents involving people getting caught in the doors and suffering contusions and bruising, especially children and the elderly are in danger of falling. In isolated incidents, the train pulled out of the station in spite of a person being caught in the door – a deadly trap. Their consequence from these incidents: The ET 423 series trains used in Munich are unsafe, the doors are not allowed to be closed until the driver has visually checked the platform. Their hand was forced by the fact that they have been the subject of criminal investigations following such incidents.

This throws Munich back to the early days of the S-Bahn era in 1972 when the ET 420 series was used in Munich, except that in those days passengers could close the doors themselves manually.

The S-Bahn authorities have advised the drivers to keep the doors closed as far as possible and regret the inconvenience. The automatic system is being upgraded with sensors installed along the complete height of the doors, it is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Source: Süddeutsche Zeitung e-paper
Nr.4, Saturday 5. January 2008

A cock up of almost British railway proportions! With this and a smoking ban this place feels more like home every day.

This happened to my mother when she was younger (in Germany), her arm was caught in the door and she was dragged along for quite a while. She still has a weird spot on her arm where the muscle is kind of mushy (where the doors had caught it).

Incredible that something is only being done to change this now - the technology to avoid it has existed for a while (sensors, automatic release etc.).

They have had supposedly the latest sensors for a while but they were obviously failing.
As passengers claimed but DB denied. Now the Eisenbahn Bundesamt (the regulator) has stepped in.
Really pissed off if DB had been lying to us for a number of years.

Of all the different S-Bahns I've been on over the past 6-8 months only 2 trains had the new sensor systems on the doors.
Last I heard they only installed them on a small handful of trains for testing. So now it looks like they'll get installed on all S-Bahns..
(I think they also had cameras too, or at least they had blue stickers on the doors saying "Video überwacht")

They were testing some new matrix-style ones earlier in 2007, but I don't know if they introduced them yet.

S-Takt magazin (German), pdf p8

I'll get me anorak...

EDIT: or borrow DK's.

haha, how long have those new sbahns been running for now?

Clearly in the cases that someone was caught in the door and the S-Bahn pulled out anyway, the drivers never bothered to visually check the platform. It would have already helped to make drivers visually check the platform before they pull out of the station!

@ Mr.Mosh


From: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-Bahn_M%C3%BCnchen

So they have been running the new type of train for about eight years now.