Once again in Britain families suffer the loss of loved ones killed in a devastating rail accident.
As the sombre story of the Selby rail disaster developed through the day it appeared that the principal factor was not a broken rail or a head-on collision, as in the Hatfield and Paddington rail crashes, but an extraordinary series of circumstances sparked off by a car.
It seems that the events leading to the deaths of 13 people and injuries to 70 more began with a road accident.
Within hours of the crash questions were being raised about the effectiveness of roadside barriers close to bridges over high-speed rail lines.
Early indications point to the likelihood that a Land-Rover - towing a trailer with a second car - which was being driven by a 37-year-old man from Lincolnshire left the M62 motorway, apparently after having a tyre burst. The roadside barriers across the bridge stretch for about 30 metres on either side of the crossing, but it appears that the Land-Rover and trailer slid down the roadside embankment before landing on the track below.
Television footage of the crash scene showed the road bridge and barriers above the railtrack had not been damaged, suggesting the Land Rover and trailer left the road before passing the barrier.
But some transport commentators yesterday suggested the Highways Agency, which maintains the roads and oversees road safety, should carry out "risk assessments" for all sensitive areas on the road such as where the road crosses railways, just as Railtrack must assess the risk of all its activities.
It may be that a different type of safety barrier on the M62 bridge could have prevented the Land-Rover leaving the road, but freak accidents are rarely predictable.
With the tragedy in Yorkshire, people's minds will inevitably turn to other recent rail disasters in Britain - Hatfield, Paddington and Southall.
But whereas the Hatfield crash last year was caused by a broken rail and Southall and Paddington were caused by drivers passing red lights, the Selby crash appears to have been caused by an unpredictable road accident close to the railway.
Public fears about rail travel will inevitably be revived by the Selby crash, but it is still about 15 times safer to travel by train in Britain than by car and five times safer than travelling by coach and bus.
In the past two years there have been a series of major rail crashes around the world. In December 1999, suspected signal failure led to two passenger trains colliding in mountains outside Sydney, Australia, and 12 people were killed.
In January last year 33 people were killed when two trains carrying 100 people collided on a curve on the same track 160km north-west of Oslo, and in February 2000 eight people were killed in a train crash in Germany which was blamed on human error.
As Britain reels from the sight of another disaster on the railways, it appears that this time there is some comfort in the fact that it was not Railtrack's faulty signals or driver error that caused the tragedy.