Runaway train speeds 43 miles down tracks in India without a driver

New Delhi — Social media channels lit up Monday as gob smacked Indians shared a video showing a driverless train zooming past several stations at high speed. It was no cutting-edge robotic public transport innovation, however — but a fully-loaded freight train that was apparently left unattended, on a slope, by an engineer who forgot to pull the emergency brake.

Indian Railways, the national rail operator, ordered an investigation Monday into what could have been a major disaster in a country where train tracks often bisect busy neighborhoods and collisions are common.

"We have ordered an inquiry," Deepak Kumar, a Northern Railways spokesperson, told the French news agency AFP, adding that no one had been hurt in the incident.