This sounds a bit fishy, as this kind of error has been known in railway signal systems for over 100 years: signals that fail to show stop as a default whenever power is lost:
After it was struck by lightning, the signaling device at the Wenzhou South railway station malfunctioned and failed to turn from green to red, An Lusheng, chief of the Shanghai Railway Bureau, told the news agency. He also said workers on duty were inadequately trained and failed to notice the malfunction.
Xinhua’s report, the first official explanation of the cause of the crash, raised further questions about China’s high-speed rail system, one of the world’s largest and most costly public works projects. The accident occurred when one high-speed train rear-ended another that had stalled on the tracks near Wenzhou in Zhejiang Province. High-speed rail has an excellent safety record elsewhere, especially in Japan, which has never had a fatality.
Chinese have flooded microblogging sites with furious complaints about breakneck development without heed to safety. Many also expressed fears of a cover-up, especially after reports that one train car was buried at the site despite the ongoing investigation and only later excavated.
