Indian Railway’s safety has once again come under questions after a horrific accident involving three trains that left at least 288 people dead and over 900 injured.
- The accident took place on June 2 in Odisha’s Balasore. Around 10 to 12 coaches of the Howrah-bound Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express got derailed and fell on the adjacent track.
- The Indian Railway said that there was no ‘Kavach’ system on the route, which might have stopped the express trains from the collision.
Kavach
- Kavach is an indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System. The railways has been developing its own automatic protection system since 2012 as Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), which got rechristened Kavach or ‘armour’.
- Developed in collaboration with three Indian vendors by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO), Kavach has been adopted as the National ATP System for Indian Railways.
- It is a set of electronic devices and Radio Frequency Identification devices installed in locomotives, in the signalling system as well the tracks, that talk to each other using ultra high radio frequencies to control the brakes of trains and also alert drivers, all based on the logic programmed into them.
- One of its features is that by continuously refreshing the movement information of a train, it is able to send out triggers when a loco pilot jumps signal, called Signal Passed at Danger (SPAD), a grave offence in railway operations with respect to safety, and the key to accidents like collision.
- The devices also continuously relay the signals ahead to the locomotive, making it useful for loco pilots in low visibility, especially during dense fog.
