Once again the BBC’s ‘Timely, trusted tech news‘ is neither timely, nor can be trusted.
Yup. The Y2K ‘failure’ didn’t happen on the scale predicted Thomas Germain, so why even mention it?
The reason it didn’t happen, was because tens of thousands of software engineers such as myself, fixed code, so that it wouldn’t happen – something the BBC article studiously leaves out. That some companies, and indeed some authorities ignored what they had been told accounted for several failures.
Apparently Thomas regards train delays and misprinted jury summons as ‘trivial’ – that is only his point of view.

Wickipedia gives a reasonably accurate account of the reason why remediation was required. Year 2000 Problem
It also lists a considerable number of ‘falures’ where the problem hadn’t been fixed. An example:
‘In New York, a video store accidentally generated a $91,250 late fee because the store computer determined a tape rental was 100 years overdue.’ – It doesn’t mention whether the tape renter had a heart attack when he was given the bill.
The BBC article: Internet Outages