I was at a train stop and stopped my car b/c the arms were down and a train was coming . There was a truck and front of my car and the guy didn’t feel like waiting so he drove through the space ! :smack: I was like WTF ! I pulled my car back when I saw the fool doing this b/c the train was already in sight and I didn’t want to be near that truck if it didn’t made it in time . I guess people are plan stupid or like taking risks with their lives.
…So did he make it?!
(bolding mine)
But how do you get in the habit of stopping ON train tracks unless you are a complete and utter moron?
I used to go through a level freight train crossing daily where traffic was often backed up from the intersection ahead. I ALWAYS stopped well before the tracks until there was room for me to get all the way across. So did everybody else. What possible advantage would I gain from stopping on the tracks instead?
I mentioned this is the railway signals thread, but when thousands of hoboes crisscrossed North America seeking work, when they weren’t hopping a freight, they walked along the tracks. Many were killed by trains while doing so.
Tracks are a form of speed bumps. Any kind of rough terrain can cause a car to stall. And some people stop, and then proceed, and the car stalls as they pull forward. It’s the same phenomenon that causes cars to stall in the middle of intersections-- they are running either too rich or too lean.
:eek: That’s some alligator!
Yup. That too.
Or, following old-style standard safety procedure: Stop. Look and Listen. Proceed.
Around here, all busses and some large trucks still have to do that at crossings with no gates and lights.
So then you are starting up hill from a full stop. Old trucks used to stall sometimes when you did that.
They have /finally/ fixed an crossing here that had killed several people. Traffic would be moving steadly, then stop. The one car that was crossing at that time would get stuck: sometimes it would get hit.
We have quite a few level crossings, and people are used to not stopping accross the lines, but the design and traffic on that one crossing just made it very difficult to predict.
People love to congregate on tracks for some reason. A few months ago I was at Vandenberg AFB to watch a rocket launch. There was a big crowd and some railroad tracks. For whatever reason, a disproportionate number of people stood on the tracks despite there being plenty of space available elsewhere. One might think that, even if you really want to check out the tracks, it might be a bad idea to stand there given that you’ll shortly be distracted by a fucking rocket launch and probably not be able to hear a train horn over the noise, but no.
Fortunately, the military is well-trained to deal with idiot civvies and sent a guy out to shoo them off.
Baby was. I have never seen an alligator trained that well before but Skeeter did it. If this sounds like bullshit, ask Terry Bradshaw, the NFL hall of famer and announcer. He was their next door neighbor and knows it too.
As for train safety, this thread reminds me of the most macabre British PSA ever produced (that is a very competitive category). If you liked the Hunger Games, you will love this one. I cannot believe someone thought this was a good idea to show on public television but it is actually a pretty good short film as long as you don’t mind child carnage.
I think the joke was your “and could heal” typo :). Some kind of alligator cleric came to mind, personally…
The comedian Heywood Banks says that you can tell at an early age who is going to be hit by a train. They are the kids who sit at the bottom of a playground slide and can’t figure out why other kids keep banging into them.
I don’t think she could cure cancer but seeing a loving and trained alligator certainly made me happy. She could also walk behind her owner on command.
Apparently, people also get run over trying to crawl under cars or cross between them instead of going around. This is because each coupling between the cars has a little bit of slack to make it easier for the engines to get the train moving – the cars start moving one at a time instead of all at once. So when the engines start moving, the wagons further down the train don’t start moving until all the slack is taken up. In a long train, this can result in wagons suddenly lurching 10-15 feet forward from a dead stop.
True but it also people that have no sense whatsoever. I used to have to take the commuter rail into Boston for work. The times were very specific and you were SOL if you missed yours at least for the next hour. The station I used only had boarding on one side of the tracks but parking on both sides. You had to be on the loading side before the train arrived.
I once witnessed two grown men seeing the train coming in, running as fast as they could down the steps leading to the station and running right in front of the train to make it to the loading side. It was like an action movie because the second one had to dive across to avoid getting hit by the train and it only missed by inches. The funny thing is that the conductor didn’t let them board because what they did was too dangerous. He was right. I honestly thought I was about to witness someone getting crushed by a train.
Midsummer night of 2010, Castelldefels. A train running at appropriate speeds and with the driver doing everything correctly hit a group of 30 people who’d decided to cross the tracks instead of taking the overpass. 13 dead (I find reports in English which list 12; Spanish ones list 13).
Track walkers get cited by the cops around here. Many of the people cited are homeless or drifters. Unlikely to be able to pay a fine. But I understand why walking on tracks is against the code, and the code must be enforced, for the dozens of reasons cited on this thread!
:rolleyes:
I just saw a Facebook video showing how people may be hit by trains.
[For those who can’t or won’t click, it shows a British guy maneuvering his bicycle through the crossing guards, with predictable results.]
Actually, not the result I was predicting. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed by that.
If you look at that video, you can see the guy giving the finger to the people who were shouting at him. He seems totally unfazed by his near miss.
Not surprising, considering it sounds like he’s saying “I feel like jumping …” before the horn drowns him out. Presumably the rest of that was 'in front of the train." :eek:
(Aside: was that video shot with a film camera, or was something else constantly whirring like a film camera?)
It’s a phone camera. You’d have to be pretty drunk yourself to shoot a film camera in vertical mode like that. Don’t know what the whirring sound is. Maybe a vehicle of some sort or perhaps the gate motor itself?