In my grandfather’s case the year was 1956. Most likely his truck had a manual choke, and was old. He was close to 70, so his reflexes had probably slowed a bit.
I think what he said was “I don’t fucking care, mate.”
Fresno city college has a heavily used rail line that runs between the parking lots and the main body of the campus. I know its more like 1 time in 10, but it always seems like there is a train coming through between 7:45-7:55.
Sometimes its an amtrack barreling along at 60+mph
worse, a huge cargo train that stops,
then you get people trying to duck under cars or couplers.
This leads to the obvious disasters.
Not that part, but the part after it. I can’t tell what he says, but it does sound something like “I’m gonna jump TRAIN HORN” I don’t think that’s exactly what he says, but that’s the part John Bredin is referring to.
Wow. You’re not kidding. I didn’t check to see if those are all the same crossing, but it seems there have been multiple incidents over the past decade or so.
I think he’s actually saying “I don’t fucking care, mate” - presumably in response to someone telling him off or that there’s a train coming. Doesn’t seem suicidal to me, merely idiotic.
The whirring noise sounds like it might be a motorcycle engine.
Missed the edit window. On a second listen, you’re right. He’s saying something like “I feel like ju…”. I missed that the first time round.
Yes, it happens a lot. I commute into London on one of the main commuter lines, and I’d say at least once or twice a month there’s an announcement of delays “due to a person hit by a train”. They’re generally suicides.
A few months ago I was on the train that hit this person. The train was passing through the station at high speed, without stopping, and suddenly there was a loud bang followed by the sound of gravel striking the underside of the train: it really sounded like the train was derailing. We came to a fairly abrupt halt, with a strong smell of burning brakes, and were stuck for about 2 hours before they could move the train (backwards, into the station).
We had to move to another train. As that one left, we passed the front of the train we had been on. A person can do a lot of damage to the front of a train at that speed. :eek:
Some years agao, my family was visiting me in San Dog, and we were on the trolley (light rail system). My sister was shooting the shit with the operator (at a stop! 
). Somehow the conversation came around to people getting hit, and she asked the operator if he’d ever had a close call. The conversation-stopping answer? “I’ve killed three people.”
Yes, even those brightly-colored and relatively slow railed trolleys can catch careless or stupid folks by surprise.
Darwinism in action.
I once asked a cop what the most horrible thing he ever saw was. “A man who tried to drive his car across the train tracks to avoid a train and missed. He was spread out over two city blocks.”
Sort of related, sort of a hijack. A good friend of mine and I were bicycling in Ottawa a long time ago (late 1970s) on the bike path along the Ottawa River Parkway. There was one part that jogged left to cross the parkway at a 90 degree angle with a slight decline in elevation. We were both about to cross when I hit my brakes, a couple of feet away from a city bus that was sailing right in front of us. My friend stopped immediately after I did.
I told him that I never saw that bus until it was immediately in front of us. He didn’t see it either and it was the sound of my brakes that made him stop.
We analyzed the situation afterward and the best that we could come up with was that the colour scheme of the bus was close enough to the background that we just didn’t notice it in our peripheral vision. Or not.
This train-related event http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=9919897#post9919897 is about the worst thing I’ve seen in peacetime.
Harrowing.