page_title: Brétigny-sur-Orge train crash
section_title: Causes
hierarchical_section_title: Brétigny-sur-Orge train crash / Causes
caption_attribution_description: English: Traversée-jonction double. Cet appareil de voie permet le croisement ou la déviation des voies de circulation (dans cette position les trains venant du bas à droite sont dirigés vers la droite).
context_page_description: On 12 July 2013, a train crash occurred in the commune of Brétigny-sur-Orge in the southern suburbs of Paris, France, when a passenger train carrying 385 people derailed and hit the station platform. Seven people were killed and there were 11 serious injuries and 21 minor injuries.
  The accident was cited as the most serious rail crash in France since the 1988 Gare de Lyon accident in which 56 people were killed.
context_section_description: Three investigations were initiated, by the Évry public prosecutor, the Land Transport Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA-TT) of the Ministry of Transport, and the SNCF. The train is believed to have derailed on the approach to Brétigny when passing over a switch 200 metres (660 ft) before the station. The French transport minister Frédéric Cuvillier stated that the accident was not due to human error and ruled out any responsibility on the part of the driver.
  At a press conference the day after the accident, an SNCF director stated that the failure of a fishplate (rail joint) was the cause of the accident, confirmed in the third SNCF press conference by supporting photographs. According to Guillaume Pepy, the SNCF president, the fishplate broke away from the rails and became lodged in the middle of the switch, causing the derailment.
  Pepy said the SNCF considered itself responsible for the lives of its passengers and announced a campaign to check all similar equipment, nearly 5,000 units throughout the network, whose maintenance is within the SNCF's remit.
caption: The 4 bolt fishplate involved in the derailment linked the lower right switch (here open) to the frog (the crossing zone). The inner plate swung around the last bolt and blocked the right frog of the double slip.
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