The emergency brakes of the Stresa cable car could have been blocked for years. And what could emerge from some amateur video recordings of 2014 and 2018 acquired by the German public broadcaster ZDF.
In the video recordings you can see the forks that exclude the emergency brakes. The photographic material comes from the Swiss video amateur Michael Meier who, for technical interest, filmed the Mottarone cable car system three times: in 2014, 2016 and 2018.
After the accident where 14 people died, Meier went through his material and discovered the presence of the forks: «Then I noticed that these forks can already be seen in some photos. As early as 2014, these forks were being used with people in the cab, ”Meier told ZDF. The recordings are also available to the Italian Public Prosecutor’s Office.
German TV presented photos and videos to Professor Gabor Oplatka, a Swiss cable car specialist who came to a conclusion: “Obviously we practiced. And so far we have been lucky because the damage to the cable cars is relatively rare ”