We have the technology...

We have all seen in stark clarity one of the worst rail disasters of the modern age. Quite how something so terrible could happen despite the technology and fail safe systems available to us today, is frankly incredible and does fill me with a sense of anger and frustration.
There can be no doubt that the tragedy was caused by excessive speed. You don't need to be a rail industry expert to see that something travelling so fast around so tight a bend will try to leave its tracks. After all, the only thing holding the train to the track is gravity - nothing else. I know, as does many a youngster, how easy it is to crash a model train on a tight bend. Go too fast and off it comes, and it did often, much to the frustration of my father who would have to put the train back on the track each time.
Something clearly went seriously wrong. Why did the safety systems fail and how was it possible for a driver with, so it is claimed, so much experience to drive his train at such speed into a bend that already had gained notoriety for its extreme curvature?
It would be so easy to fit a system that automatically reduced the train speed in time for the bend, overriding the regulator, until it was safe for the driver to resume control. This technology exists - and it is used. We only have to look at our own driver-less Docklands Light Railway to know that it works - and has done very well for many years. A roller coaster has this technology fitted by standard. I find tragedies like this, and the needless loss of life, harder to accept as it would have been so easy to prevent the train from going too fast.
As with all tragedies, we need to learn lessons from them and this is no exception. But in my mind, the lesson is a simple one, and that's simply to use the technology we have.