Prosecutors sought a 2 1/2-year prison term Tuesday for a train engineer accused of professional negligence in a head-on collision last year between two trains in Fukui Prefecture, in which 25 people, including himself, were injured.
The prosecution demanded the sentence in its closing argument before the Fukui District Court in the trial of Makoto Shimokawatoko, 23. "He failed to pay attention, thus failing to perform his most basic duty as a train driver," the prosecutors said.
Shimokawatoko was arrested over the June 24, 2001, collision between two single-car trains on Keifuku Electric Railroad Co.'s Echizen Line in Katsuyama. He pleaded guilty to the charges.
Shimokawatoko, the driver of a local train bound for Fukui, stands accused of failing to heed a red signal at Hossaka Station and failing to wait for the arrival of an express train bound for Katsuyama before departing.
The local train, with eight passengers on board, collided with the single-car express carrying 15 passengers about 500 meters from the station at 6:08 p.m.
Shimokawatoko had been a driver for less than six months before the collision. He told investigators he failed to wait for the express because he was preoccupied over a manual signal operation he was supposed to perform for the first time on another of the carrier's lines later that day.
A similar collision occurred on Dec. 17, 2000, on the same line in the town of Matsuoka. In that accident, a train driver was killed and 25 people were injured.
The carrier notified the transport ministry last October that it was closing down its three rail lines in Fukui Prefecture and replacing train operations with bus service.