Driver on phone when Spanish train derailed, court says
(CNN) -- The driver of a train  that derailed in northwestern Spain last week, killing 79 people, was  on the phone with railway staff when the train crashed, court officials  announced Tuesday, citing information from data recorders.
 
The train was going 153 kph (95 mph) when it derailed, the superior tribunal of Galicia said.
That's nearly twice the speed limit on the curve where the accident happened.
Authorities have charged  the train's driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, with 79 counts of homicide by  professional recklessness and an undetermined number of counts of  causing injury by professional recklessness.
A court has granted  Garzon conditional release, but his license to operate a train has been  suspended for six months. He also was required to surrender his passport  and report to court weekly. CNN efforts to locate him have been  unsuccessful.
Spain train crash victims mourned at memorial massThe train, nearing the  end of a six-hour trip between Madrid and Ferrol, derailed Wednesday  evening as it hurtled around a bend in Santiago de Compostela.
Minutes before the  derailment, Garzon received a call on his work phone, apparently  receiving instructions on the way to Ferrol from a Renfe staff member,  the court said Tuesday. Background noise suggested he was looking at or  shuffling papers, the court said.On Spain's railroad  system, command and control posts can communicate with drivers at any  point during a journey, a spokeswoman from Renfe -- the Spanish railroad  company -- told CNN's Karl Penhaul. Drivers communicate via  radio-telephones known in Spanish as "tren-tierras" or train-to-land.  But drivers also use mobile phones if radio-telephones are not working  or "when it's considered necessary," the spokeswoman said.
Steve Harrod, a railroad  transportation expert at Ohio's University of Dayton, said he was  stunned by the report that the driver may have been speaking on the  phone shortly before the crash. In the United States, Harrod said,  railroad drivers are not allowed to use cell phones to prevent dangerous  distractions.Shortly before the train  crashed, according to reports, the Spanish train had passed from a  computer-controlled area of the track to a zone that requires the driver  to take control of braking and acceleration, Harrod said. "It's  possible that the driver's phone conversation -- which apparently was  part of his official capacity as a driver -- distracted him and he  missed the transition from automatic to driver control," Harrod said. He  may have been unaware he was in control of the train and realized, 'oh,  no, we're headed for a curve.' If that's true, I really don't think it  was his fault."
The Renfe spokeswoman  told CNN that command and control posts have real-time systems to show  each train's precise location at a given time. If this were the case, a  controller who would have phoned the train driver might have known the  train was approaching a curve.According to an  interview in state-owned Efe news service with the president of the  state-owned Administrator of Railway Infrastructures, the train should  have started slowing down about 4 kilometers (2.48 miles) before the  curve. At 192 kph, the train would have been traveling about 3.2  kilometers a minute.
He hit the brakes  seconds before the crash, bringing the speed down from 192 kph (119  mph), according to the court. He was still on the phone when the train  flew off the tracks.Of the 79 who died in the ensuing wreck, 63 were from Spain. Others were from the United States, Latin America and Europe.The victims were remembered Monday in a memorial Mass at a Catholic cathedral in Santiago de Compostela."Our brothers lost their  lives ... when they had so many plans," said Archbishop Julian Barrio."  It is not easy to understand and accept this reality," he said, "but I  say to you, let our pain not be wasted. Everything has meaning in our  lives. We are not shouting in a vacuum."
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