He expressed the opinion that the human factor is decisive in the operation of the railway, whether we have systems or not the former president of the Railway Regulatory Authority (2011-2016), Vasilios Tsiamandiscalled to testify as a witness to the commission of inquiry for “the investigation of the crime of Tempe”.

“I absolutely agree with the position that the human factor is decisive, and this is recognized by all security systems,” said Mr. Tsiamandis, noting that in all risk assessments the human factor is paramount.

Mr. Tsiamantis, who emphasized that and without advanced security systems the railway business can be out of businessworks safely with the Traffic Regulation, he said that the more advanced and sophisticated a safety system is, it obviously reduces a lot and eliminates the margin for error. Absolute annihilation may not be possible, because there is a human factor. “If one of the components (of an advanced security system) goes down, obviously a human will be called upon to handle that event [..] That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a system,” he added.

To another, related question, Mr. Tsiamantis answered that “If the safety systems were working, the risk of the accident would have been almost eliminated. It’s one thing to have a one in a million risk and another one in a billion. [..] In the risk assessments that the experts do, they are obviously talking to you with probabilities. Because life is all about possibilities. We have to understand that.”

It is noted that at the beginning of today’s meeting of the committee, in which Mr. Vasilios Tsiamandis (president of RAS 2011-2016), Athanasios Vourdas (managing director of ERGOSE 2015-2017) and Christos Dionelis (head of ERGOSE 2015-2019) a request of the former president of the Panhellenic Personnel Union (PEPE) to attend (to testify as witness) in the examination room.