Driverless 'ghost train' set fire then ‘fled' from police with nobody on board

21 January 2023 , 13:05

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Driverless 'ghost train' set fire then ‘fled' from police with nobody on board

A driverless 'ghost train' which set on fire in southern Germany humiliated authorities after it began taking off toward Austria of its own accord.

Firefighters had been called to put out the train blaze near the village of Strass, around 80 miles from Munich, at about 3 am local time.

Videos show the train caught in a huge burst of flames, but as authorities tried to calm the fire it soon turned into an unexpected odd chase when the train fled on its own accord.

The train mysteriously started moving downhill on the sloping track, picking up speed and rolling several miles toward the town of Freilassing.

The fire was extinguished and nobody was injured, the Bavarian Red Cross said in a statement (BRK Kreisverband Berchtesgadener Land)

A video posted online by the Freilassing Volunteer Firefighting Company showed flames and smoke pouring from the train as it swept through the town.

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Firefighters followed close behind and railway officials managed to switch the ghost train onto a side track near Freilassing station where it was stopped by a buffer before it could cross the border.

The fire was extinguished and nobody was injured, the Bavarian Red Cross said in a statement.

In 2019, fourteen passengers were injured after a driverless train in Tokyo went in the wrong direction and crashed into a buffer stop.

The rescue operation in action (BRK Kreisverband Berchtesgadener Land)

It was the first accident involving an automated train in 30 years and while serious was not life-threatening.

The train travelled the wrong way for about 20 metres, Akihiko Mikami, president of the train operator, said in a press conference.

Compared to self-driving cars that have recently taken the road, driverless trains have a very safe history and it is not known what started the fire in Germany.

Firefighters tackling the blaze (BRK Kreisverband Berchtesgadener Land)

A driverless Tesla car crashed in December last year and resulted in two youngsters being transported to hospital and led to huge delays in the area on roads.

It was the latest in a series of accidents blamed on Tesla technology and despite the feature “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software, being sold as an expensive add-on to vehicles, it continually faces legal, regulatory and public scrutiny.

From July 2021 to October 2022, the US Department of Transportation reported 605 crashes involving vehicles equipped with autopilot and 474 of them were Teslas, which make up three-quarters of the accidents.

Rachel Hagan