A member of the government's transport accident investigation commission leaked a draft report about the fatal 2005 Amagasaki train derailment in Hyogo Prefecture to West Japan Railway Co., government officials revealed Friday.
Koichi Yamaguchi, then a member of the Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission, handed the panel's draft report to Masao Yamazaki, then president of JR West, shortly before the panel's final report was released on June 28, 2007, the commission's successor, the Japan Transport Safety Board, said.
In response to Yamazaki's repeated requests, Yamaguchi handed over the draft and also called for deleting from the report a clause disadvantageous to JR West which said the accident could have been avoided if the railway operator had installed an automatic train stopping system, or ATS.