TOKYO — An effort to make up 90 seconds on a train schedule may have led to Japan's deadliest rail crash in four decades, a Monday morning rush-hour derailment that left at least 73 people dead and 442 injured.
The accident stunned a nation where millions of commuters move daily along intricate arteries of train lines whose schedules are tightly synchronized. Japanese media and others speculated that a young train driver's race to make up for lost time had caused the crash.
Rescuers searched for survivors into Tuesday morning, picking through the crumpled remains of the seven-car train that skipped the tracks, apparently at high speed, before wrapping itself around a nine-story apartment building near Amagasaki, northwest of Osaka in western Japan.
Investigators were not certain why the train derailed. But officials said the train had overshot the previous station, forcing it to back up to let passengers on and off. It was running 60 seconds behind schedule when it crashed on a bend.
Two cars left the tracks, rammed a parked car and hit the building, which is 20 feet from the line. The other five cars plowed into the ones ahead, flinging about 580 passengers into a tangle of crushed and bent metal and leaving the train impaled in the building.
Survivors described a horrific crush inside the cars as the train left the tracks and skidded. Passengers in the back of the cars were thrown toward the front "like they were washed away," one survivor said.
"It was like the picture of hell," an unidentified man told Japanese TV after he was freed from the front car.
About 150 of the survivors suffered serious injuries. Three people -- two 18-year-old men and a 46-year-old woman -- were pulled from the wreckage more than 15 hours after the crash. Rescue workers said more people were probably still inside.
The whereabouts and condition of the driver were unknown.
For a country with an enviable rail safety record, the accident focused attention on the complex connections in a transportation system that moves 60 million riders a day.
Critics say the system places punctuality ahead of safety.
Officials of the private West Japan Railway Co. said the accident could have been caused by several factors, including stones on the track. They calculated that the train would have had to be traveling 82 mph, or almost twice the 43-mph speed limit on that section of track, for its wheels to jump the rails. The train was not designed to reach that speed, they said.
