I know it happens, but I’ve never understood how someone dies on foot on a train track. Wouldn’t you hear a train coming long before it hit you, and it only takes a second to step off the tracks. When I was younger I used to play on train tracks and I never got hit as I knew to get off the tracks before the train got there. Are these people playing chicken with the trains or something?
People on foot get creamed all the time in the Chicago Suburbs. It almost always happens at a commuter station with a grade crossing and fall into one of the two categories: 1. The last person in a group crossing against the signal in front of a train who figures that all the people in front of him/her are crossing so it must be safe (usually happens in winter when hoods limit visibility). 2. People who ignore the signal because there’s a train sitting at the station, only to be sent to the Club Car in the Sky by a fast-moving train on one of the other tracks (a great argument for whistle-blowing).
Depends on the train, how fast it’s travelling, and sight distance. There was a well-publicized incident in New Jersey, I think last year, which involed three kids, their sitter, an electric train (an Amtrak Acela?), and a curve. The sitter and the kids were walking on the rails when the electric train, which are amazingly quiet, came around the bend behind them. Because of the limited sight distance presented by the bend, the engineer had no idea anyone was on the tracks until it was too late. The youngest child was killed when he couldn’t get clear in time.
There’s an infamous piece of video from a surveilance camera showing a woman ‘getting it’ at a train station. She’s crossing the tracks from platform to platform (this is a commuter station on dual-use tracks), passing in front of the train she just gotten off of. She stepped past the engine without looking, only to get pasted by the rushing commuter train coming up frm behind her train on the second set of tracks.
Ugly.
Tranquilis, you might be referring to the piece I saw which was shot at a train station I used to go to daily (same line of tracks that delini8r is referring to, I moved slightly east of there now). Someone had set up a video camera to film some train that would be coming through later in the day, I think. He caught some video of a man and a woman walking around in front of the parked train, and the man looked to the left (past the train) and stopped. The woman didn’t, took another step or two, and the video cut off there as the speeding train came into sight.
The sad thing is, I think the “blow horn when passing a stopped train at a station” regulation might have been in effect at the time.
At least one conductor on these trains has said that some of the pedestrian ‘accidents’ are suicides. The others may be misjudging the train’s speed, might slip, etc. Within hours of a recent accident with a pedestrian, I was at the stop immediately to the east of where the accident was, and saw no less than 6-7 people run in front of a moving train when it was less than a block away. :mad:
My father had an expression that truly describes this.
"He [in this case the train]has the right of weight"
4,000lb. car vs 6 jillion lb train.
Here in Nashville, in the Antioch area, there is a train crossing in between a set of stop signs. Traffic gets real heavy in this area, and backs up at the second sign. People have a tendency to stop on the tracks in this area, as there are no bars, just lights. Never mind the sign stating to not stop on the tracks. Never mind the white lines telling you where to stop. I think last year we had 5 or 6 cars hit at that crossing, from people stopped on the tracks, waiting for the stop sign. These days, I see anyone doing this, I root for the train…
I’m afraid I’m in the Darwin camp. Trains (non-electric) are BIG and LOUD. They SHAKE the fucking GROUND. If you are ignorant enough of your surroundings to not notice a train bearing down on you, well stay off the damn tracks for gods sake. I don’t think most people fall into this catagory.
Re: crossing gates… I’d prefer there be NO crossing gates. If the lights are flashing and there’s obviously no train coming, I’d like to have the freedom to continue on my way free from the hinderance of a retarded fucking machine.
This reminds me of a story from high school… not rail crossing, but a drawbridge. A friend had just badly hurt her ankle. We were taking her to the hospital. Her ankle was swelling impressively and she was crying in pain. We were 3 or 4 cars back from the flashing lights of the drawbridge. The crossing gates were OPEN. The lights continued to flash stupidly for what seemed like an eternity, there was obviously no ship coming, and the people in front of us refused to move across the bridge because of the flashing lights.
My point? Safety devices malfunction. People should learn to evaluate the safety of the situation on their own.
And another thing… why do school busses have to stop before crossing tracks? This seems to be the MOST dangerous thing you could do, maximizing the chances of getting stuck on the tracks (due to the engine stalling or whatever). Your best chance of not getting stuck on the tracks is to enter the crossing with enough momentum to GET ACROSS THE TRACKS.
We have that happen pretty regularly in the SF Bay Area too. Nine out of Ten times the Darwin Canditare is wearing headphones of some kind (though I still haven’t figured out why they can’t feel the freakin earth moving beneath their feet). I figure the rest are either suicides or morons who don’t realize that trains can’t steer right or left.
There is also the occasional situation of someone walking on a train bridge (away from any lights or road crossings, so they don’t see/hear those warnings) . I know in my hometown, people often walk across a particular bridge to get to the college residences (its a good 15 minute short-cut, apparently. I have never walked it myself, but friends have…). A friend’s brother is permanently braindamaged because he did this once - this bridge has a terrible fall into rocky, shallow water, and when the train came, he had the choice to get killed or jump. A friend of his got killed, and he went from top-of-his-class-smart to permanently at the level (approx) of a 12 year old. It could have been much worse. Also, even if you can run ahead of the train, there are steep hills to either side for a while, and some people have been hurt throwing themselves down those hills to get away.
It’s pretty scary, and thats why I’ve always taken the long way to get to res. I’ve also reprimanded friends for doing it, but they pretty much think I overeract. It’s that damn " it can’t happen to me" attitude…
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by tadc *
** Re: crossing gates… I’d prefer there be NO crossing gates. If the lights are flashing and there’s obviously no train coming, I’d like to have the freedom to continue on my way free from the hinderance of a retarded fucking machine. **
Let’s eliminate stop lights and stop signs too while we’re at it! Stop signs can be chopped down and stolen by hooligans and stop lights malfunction too!
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Jurhael *
**
Sure, as soon as every car is as big and slow as a train and crosses as infrequently as a train and can be heard coming from miles away? Great idea dumbass.
“Sure, as soon as every car is as big and slow as a train and crosses as infrequently as a train and can be heard coming from miles away?”
This is exactly one of the issues I was raising in the OP. Not all trains are slow – there are in fact a lot of trains that travel at highway speeds. There are a lot of lines where the trains are NOT infrequent: wherever you see two or more tracks, it’s because there’s enough traffic to support it (the railroad’s don’t spend more on expensive maintenance than they have to).
Next time I’ll be sure to use one of these:
:rolleyes:
You want my real reply? Here:
To eliminate rail road crossing signs is just FLAT OUT STUPIDITY. End of story.
“This is exactly one of the issues I was raising in the OP. Not all trains are slow – there are in fact a lot of trains that travel at highway speeds. There are a lot of lines where the trains are NOT infrequent: wherever you see two or more tracks, it’s because there’s enough traffic to support it (the railroad’s don’t spend more on expensive maintenance than they have to).”
Honestly, that’s what I was thinking. I also don’t buy that trains can be heard from miles away. Maybe with older trains, but NEWER ONES? I’m sorry. I’ve been on trains in Greece and Amsterdam and the newer ones were NOT that noisy…or slow. I don’t think American trains could be all that much different.
I grew up on the banks of the Hudson River. Down at the rivershore there’s a small park, a nice place to go fishing. To get there from the road you have to cross 2 train tracks that service both Amtrak passenger lines heading down to New York City and the freight service that goes to Albany and all other points. You can be sitting on the riverbank 30 feet away from the track, and one of those passenger trains will whoosh by you without you hearing a fucking thing until it’s actually there. In addition, the multiple train tracks in my home county are usually through wooded areas - hell, the whole county is a wooded area, so there’s not much choice - which means limited visibility. Limited visibility, fast and quiet passenger trains… And even the freight trains, which are slower and louder, are still hard to hear when you’re SITTING IN A CAR with a motor making noise right in front of where you’re sitting, probably with your radio on or talking to the passengers.
Sure, let’s eliminated railroad crossings, that makes tons of sense. Stupid fucking assnuggets. :rolleyes:
I’m coming home from a job one summer evening, and I come to a set of railroad tracks. A sign says “stop here”.Another sign says “do not stop on tracks” A train is stopped on the first of five sets of rails, not obstructing the intersection, but (I think), maybe moving any second. The impatient person behind me lays on the horn, backs up, bumping into the car stopped behind him, runs around me flipping me the bird as he does.
To be immediately hit by a southbound freight doing probably forty five or fifty miles an hour.
I saw this happen in front of me, with my own eyes. The train was in another town before it stopped.
Normally, I don’t wish ill on people, and I didn’t wish ill on this person, but all I could tell the investigating officer was “he got what he deserved” I was shaken for a long time, but
I ALWAYS STOP FOR RAILROAD CROSSINGS. Certainly before this, but DEFINITELY since.
And the thing that amazes me is how often this happens. Sheesh.
We are surrounded by morons with license to operate motor vehicles.
b.
When I was growing up, one of the neighborhood kids was driving to the store to get milk for his mom. He crossed the tracks and was shoved 400 feet by a train. It took the emergency crew over an hour to get him out of the car but he lived, sort of.
The tracks didn’t have crossing guards and the crossing was right after a curve in the tracks. They speculated that he had his radio turned up and never heard anything approaching. The crossing guards would have probably prevented this.
Why anyone would be against this safety precaution is beyond me.
There are limits, and our city went beyond them. Understand that i LOVE trains.
A girl was killed trying to get her bike out of the tracks near my place. THEY PUT IN ADDTIONAL CROSSING GUARDS ACROSS THE SIDEWALK. This cost $100,000s. Guess what. People still die on those tracks.
We asked that the freight trains at 2 AM tone down or eliminate their horns. Incredible fury and anger from the railroad. Somehow they imagine they’re not a money-making business upsetting the community for their own gain? If it’s night, it’s hard to believe those train lights, which can be seen a mile away, aren’t sufficient warning. If they aren’t then maybe a couple quiet honks near crossings is appropriate. BUT NOT A 30 SECOND, FULL OUT WAIL EVERY CITY BLOCK. I don’t know whether it saves any lives, but it sure makes life miserable for the 1,000s (!) of people whose sleep is disrupted. Sleepy drivers in morning commute don’t make for fatal road accidents?
Count me in as someone who is wholeheartedly in favor of crossing guards.
When I was in high school, one of my brother’s friends was killed by a train. The crossing where he was killed was marked by a sign, but had no lights or crossing guards. It was also at the foot of a hill. My brother’s friend was driving home down that hill late at night, and drove directly into the side of a train which was sitting on the tracks. He had NOT been drinking, and was not speeding - he just didn’t see the train sitting there on the tracks, because that section of the train was made up of UNLOADED flat cars. Driving down the hill after dark, the low profile cars just weren’t visible, and when he reached the (short) segment of flat road immediately before the tracks, where the cars could be seen, it was too late for him to stop. After his death, lights and crossing gates were installed, and there were no more accidents during the several additional years that we lived in the area.
Crossing guards save lives.
Now, I come from a small town in Oklahoma where one of the main business is the railroad. Now, my grandfather worked for them as an engineer, and they handled freight. One of the main trains was the coal train. This trained pulled 100 cars of coal to the power plant 25 miles to the east. Now, just give the physics majors something to calculate, one of these trains weighed a minimum of 10,000 tons to 20,000 tons. So even at a minimum 10,000 tons, moving at 60 miles per hour, what in existence could stop this train. Normal stop was one mile minimum with locked brakes. Think of that when you race a train. The benefit is, the person will only wreck with a train once.
As far as deaths go, my grandfather had nightmares all of his life that I can remember; from people who tried to beat the train or did something else stupid. Nothing like knowing you have killed those kids the parent drives over the track. This is a rural area, and in his career I know of him hitting one family of Sunday joyriders, one hobo asleep on the track, lost one train in a bridge collapse (Engine and caboose were all that didn’t fall in) and a year or two before retirement a derailment on some damaged track.
Also, you could see pranksters. Since the rail roaders were a close group, There were all sorts of stories of things happening. Once, some teens actually put a sizzler cow - one of the story tall or so fiberglass bulls - on the track. The train hit it, and they didn’t even register they hit anything until they stopped in the rail yard and looked.
Of course, growing up in such a way, rail safety has been grown into myself. But a lot of people need to learn it better.