Lagerlunda rail accident

Lagerlunda rail accident
Lagerlunda rail accident
	The accident site, a few days after the crash.
Details
Date	November 15, 1875 ; circa 01:11
Location	Kapellån, between Malmslätt and Bankeberg
Coordinates	58°24′07″N 15°28′59″E / 58.402°N 15.483°E
Country	Sweden
Line	Eastern Main Line
Incident type	Head-on collision
Statistics
Trains	2
Deaths	9
Injured	3

The Lagerlunda rail accident occurred in the early hours of November 15, 1875 about 8 km west of Linköping in Östergötland, Sweden. Unclear signalling between a station master and a steam engine driver led to a train leaving the station although another train was approaching on the single line track. 9 people were killed in the head-on collision shortly after. The station master was sentenced to 6 months of prison.

A contemporary investigation by Swedish ophthalmologist Frithiof Holmgren suggested that color blindness on the part of the driver could have contributed to the accident, which prompted the introduction of mandatory color-vision screening of railroad personnel. However, more recent analyses dispute color blindness as the main cause of the accident.^[1]^[2]

References

^ Frey, F. G. (1975). "A railway accident a hundred years ago as reason for systematic testing of colour vision (author's transl)". Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde. 167 (1): 125–127. PMID 1104986.
^ Mollon, J. D.; Cavonius, L. R. (2012). "The Lagerlunda Collision and the Introduction of Color Vision Testing" (PDF). Survey of Ophthalmology. 57 (2): 178–194. doi:10.1016/j.survophthal.2011.10.003. PMID 22301271.