The answer to all of your questions, in a perfect world, is "yes." However, we live in a world where the train control systems were not in place nor were separate radio systems (per other discussions) for the transition segment so the driver needed to manually handle things and get some instructions by phone. He got distracted and blew by the signals. As with airline pilots who have to do a visual approach because some part of the airport approach system is down for construction/maintenance - and for whatever reason don't do it right. Suspicion: as with the airline thing (non-US pilots now supposed to use the GPS instrument approach at SFO - after several more low approaches and go-arounds mostly with Asian airlines since the recent crash), RENFE will hook up some kind of auto-braking to those signals between the HS line and the old line, and will probably do it before anybody else can look around and wonder why ... then hang the driver.