I have a golf buddy who lives “on the other side of the tracks” literally , in a developement accessed by a narrow road with an out of control hedge on his side of the road that makes it very difficult to see either side or any signs till you are nearly on top of the tracks which has no warning lights. He told me a couple years ago that the section was inactive…( just to regular traffic I find out later).
After having driven blindly over the tracks without stopping on dozens of occasions to his house, another neighbor casually mentions that a train does make a run down these tracks to the regional energy recovery plant nearby. When I heard that, I broke into a sweat. Needless to say, I now view myself as a statistic.
I thought I was familiar with the area…guess I was not. I can’t speak for the tracks in NY, but the infrastructure in general is in such disarray, I fear instances like this might become more common place. I confess to being just as unaware as this accident victim was.
Also, one thing to note is that the gates to the train tracks are made of MDF and are easily broken, so if you are stuck, you can just drive through them.
Withtoday’s technology, situations like this do not have to occur. It’s are willingness to spend the extra money on corrections to prevent ALL accidents like these rather then just allowing a few to be statistically acceptable. I bring out my situation, not say that the driver was immune from any responsibility, but to show that we all bear some responsibility as everyone does not make the right decision, all of the time and literally, every time we drive. Everyone of us make a wrong decision behind the wheel and it’s shear luck that when we all get away with it.
I’m sure they will break away easily if you drive through them. Unfortunately, people on the tracks don’t even try that. The new gates will probably deter people like @Marnet’s cousin. I hope they keep a few train crews from the horror of seeing their train about to collide with a motorist. I don’t think I could be an engineer, conductor, or brakeman, knowing the odds were strong that my train would eventually kill someone.
Probably the poor woman that was killed didn’t want to scratch her car by driving through the gates and didn’t realize the urgency of the approaching situation.
It’s very hard to estimate how quickly a train is approaching. Most people think they’re slower than they are, or think they will stop before they are hit. Too bad trains can’t stop in short distances. One reason trains have more lights on the front now is that it’s hard to get any sense of distance from a single light. The two lower lights on most locomotives are called ditch lights, as they were intended to light the area next to the tracks, but the added safety of having three lights was recognized quickly. Probably saved more than a few few lives.
These trains are not freight trains and do have the capability of stopping in a much shorter distance.
It seems in this day and age, every intersection obstruction once the barrack is lowered, should be made aware to " someone", somewhere with the capability of stopping the train, slowing down or making the engineer aware with a warning indicator. I can easily use present day technology to know if some one has broken a window in my home in New England while hiking through the woods in California. What am I missing, other then staying with old technology to save money.
Not many years ago a University of Oklahoma student from South Carolina I think it was jogged right past a line of stopped cars and around a lowered crossing guard with flashing lights in broad daylight and was promptly flattened by a freight train on a heavily used set of tracks.
There’s no reason to think the guy would do anything differently if he had been behind the wheel of a car; assuming he was first in line. How does anyone fix that line of thinking.
Just a few years ago a semi driver stalled his tanker truck on the tracks near the local AFB and it would not restart with a train approaching at a fairly high speed. An alert concrete truck driver hurriedly connected a chain and used the cement truck to get him off the tracks just in time.
The tanker was hauling jet fuel for the base. That could have created some real excitement around here. Guess the drivers could be considered extremely dedicated employees for not abandoning ship in the face of an impending fireball.
The cement truck driver had just pulled out of the concrete plant which was located right by the tracks. A cop had stopped just seconds before and tried to use the pushbar on his Crown Vic against the trailer but that didn’t budge it at all.
The train went through just a few minutes later. I can’t even imagine what 10k gallons of jet fuel going up would look like.
Some years back I saw a T-38 Talon go in nose first and the comparatively small amount of fuel on that plane sent a 1000 foot mushroom cloud up.
The T-38 crash was very scary. The plane hit about 1/3 mile away from the service department entrance door and a hundred or so yards away from the business where my sister in law was employed. My first thought was that her building had been hit and she was a goner.
If the cause of the failure had happened a split second later it’s quite possible that jet could have come through the service department door based on a rough guess factoring in speed, bank angle, and the arc the pilots were in when the controls locked.