First published: 31st January 2008
A Polish teenager has been arrested for using a home-made device to change the points on the Lodz tram network, derailing four trams and injuring twelve people. Police say that the fourteen-year-old trespassed in tram depots to gather information he used to build or modify a device like a TV remote control that could control all the junctions on the system.
Transport staff immediately suspected outside interference on 8th January when a driver attempting to steer his vehicle to the right was involuntarily taken to the left, resulting in the rear car jumping the rails and colliding with another passing tram. A Police search found the device, a school exercise book recording his research on the trams network and good junctions to control, and square-ended keys of the type often used in transport networks for opening "staff only" doors. The boy will face charges of endangering public safety in a juvenile court.
The junctions on tram networks are often controlled by the drivers, and not by a centralised system. An article in Gazeta Wyborcza confirms that Lodz tram junctions are, indeed, infra-red controlled, and might even be affected by an unmodified remote control in the hands of a passenger.
People in Hong Kong may wonder whether the city's tram network is similarly vulnerable.