Train driver was on phone, says Spanish investigators

MADRID (AP) — The driver was on the phone with a colleague and apparently looking at a document as his train barreled ahead at 95 mph (153 kph) — almost twice the speed limit. Suddenly, a notorious curve was upon him.
He hit the brakes too late.
The train, carrying 218 passengers in eight carriages, hurtled off the tracks and slammed into a concrete wall, killing 79 people.
On Tuesday, investigators looking into the crash announced their preliminary findings from analysis of the train’s data-recording “black boxes,” suggesting that human error appears to be the cause of Spain’s worst railway disaster in decades.
The derailment occurred near Santiago de Compostela, a city in northwestern Spain, late last Wednesday. Some 66 people injured in the crash are still hospitalized, 15 of them in critical condition.
The accident cast a pall over the city, which is the last stop for the faithful who make it to the end of the El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route that has drawn Christians since the Middle Ages. The  crash occurred on the eve of annual festivities at the shrine, which subsequently were canceled.