Keywords: safety, accident investigation, derailment, earthquake, automated guideway transit, multi-body dynamics.

The Japan Transport Safety Board contributes to preventing the occurrence of accidents and mitigating the damage, thus improving transport safety. As the recent representative example of our activities, we pick up the case of a derailment accident of an automated guideway transit, in which the automatically operated train with rubber tires was derailed due to the 2021 Chiba earthquake. After the derailment accident, about 10 minutes later, the dispatcher in the traffic control office energized the power collection rails again in order to move this train to the near station by remote control, therefore sparks flew because of a ground fault and smoke came from around the current collecting shoes under the floor of the vehicle. The purpose of this abstract is to set out the contents of the investigation reports and the recommendations on that accident made publicly available by the Japan Transport Safety Board in 2023. We show how the derailment accident occurred on the automated guideway transit line with the running track paved with concrete and side walls, and we address the important point to note in order to secure safety of passengers when the driverless automatic trains get involved in trouble.

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