Val-Thorens Cime-Caron cable car english summary

On Tuesday, November 19, 2024, at around 6:45 a.m., a technical manager from the Tarentaise and Maurienne cable car operating company (SETAM) arrived at the lower station of the Cime Caron cable car in Val Thorens. For several months now, while the ski area has been closed to the public, he has regularly been the operator of this installation, carrying out the first rotations of the morning. These rotations allow craftsmen and equipment to be brought to the summit of Cime Caron, where a construction site has been under construction for two years.

The operator arrives at the control console and starts the installation. He opens the cabin doors to let the 16 craftsmen in. Cabin No. 2 has remained at the lower station to prevent the winches from freezing. To avoid a stoppage due to a probable fault during this first run, and to ensure reasonable travel time, the operator turns a total of four operating mode selectors and activates two bypasses on the monitoring screen. The device is then in manual mode, exceptional operation, bridging validation active and "out of safety," with cable distances 1 and 2 bridged. It is 6:50 a.m.

The driver starts the cable car and manually controls the speed using the potentiometer. He starts at low speed then stops cabin No. 2 above the basket positioned on the ground in front of the station. He has the winches operated from the cabin by a craftsman who monitors the operation via the escape hatch in the cabin floor. The driver hooks the winches to the (empty) basket from below, which is then raised 3-4 meters below the cabin. The hatch is left open. The driver returns to the console and starts the installation, controlling the speed using the potentiometer until it reaches 8 m/s.

The driver hears a mechanical noise outside, at the cable car’s deflection pulley. He went outside and looked for the noise while remaining near the control station. He did not return to the console and remained outside for 3 minutes and 16 seconds. That’s when the driver heard the sound of cabin No. 1 crashing into the lower station. He rushed into the control station at 7:01 a.m. The potentiometer had remained set at 8 m/s and the bypasses were still active, so only the overspeeds at the nose of the station triggered a safety shutdown and braked the cabins. The impact likely occurred at 6 m/s.

When cabin No. 2 hit the upper station, a craftsman slipped through the open hatch and fell onto the basket below. Two people were seriously injured and four received minor injuries. The other ten people, although not injured, received psychological support. The SETAM driver was psychologically shocked. The material damage mainly affected the two cabins, the hauling cable, and parts of the station structure.
The activation of the Orelle cable cars allowed rescue services to arrive in a reasonable time despite difficult weather conditions preventing helicopter access to the summit.

Investigations have determined that this accident did not involve the technical system of the Cime Caron cable car. The causes of the accident were strictly human and organizational.
The "telling" cause of the accident was the human error of a SETAM technical manager in his role of operating the cable car. This manager left the control station to identify an abnormal noise while the installation was in manual operation, unsafe, with the distances between cables 1 and 2 bridged, and he failed to realize that, as time passed, the cabins were arriving at the station.
Whatever the cause, the human error was certainly the trigger for the accident, but above all, it was the tipping point of an unsafe situation that had been in place for several months and was shared by several SETAM technical managers. Indeed, the root cause is the widespread non-compliance by SETAM’s technical management with the regulations prohibiting the transport of passengers in manual mode at "unsafe" rated speeds.

Two organizational factors contributed to this collision :
• the concept of being "in" and "out" of operation, which governs several operating rules and is incorrectly used by the operator ;
• the safety culture, which is not sufficiently integrated within the operator.

To prevent this type of accident, the BEA-TT is issuing five recommendations and an invitation, primarily focusing on the concepts of operation as well as those of passengers, users, and customers ; on the profound and lasting improvement of the operator’s safety culture ; and on the deadman’s role.

In addition, the STRMTG issued a technical recommendation on December 18, 2024, addressed to the profession involved in the operation of cable cars and