You might be imagining something like the automated emergency braking that's used in automobiles, where radar is used to detect an imminent collision. But high-speed trains have stopping distances measured in miles, and it's not feasible for one train to detect another at such distances (especially e.g. on parallel tracks or around curves).

So instead the train positions have to be monitored and relayed by sensors in the tracks, which necessitates a coordination system. And it seems that that system is what broke down. The automated system should have been (and presumably was) fail-safe, but instead of stopping trains until it was fixed, the operators chose to override it and use a much more fallible manual signaling system.

> Stuff like this just further enhances my fear of collective travelling.

I'm sure you're already aware that this is an irrational fear. As bad as this accident is, and as reprehensible as it was that it was allowed to happen, I'm pretty sure there have still been significantly fewer fatalities per passenger-km in Spain this year than there have been on US highways. It's just that we've become numb to the fact that 100 Americans die in car accidents every day.

Train wheels are all solid metal so you can watch out for electrical faults between the left and right rails. You can, and this is in fact how many metro style trains operate, require the ground infra to be responding OK and report no faults in the next part of the rail for the train to enter a new section.

Reading other comments, looks like this Spanish system did have a German system that is more advanced that basic electrical fault based system, it was just switched off because it was broken. That's downright reckless, and it shouldn't be a normal behavior.

They don't advertise you how those things work, because it's useless information for most. Doesn't mean they never had such systems for the past ~150 years.