Unless you already know, you should familiarize yourself with the quirks of how it works in your van. How long does it take to engage, can you do it while moving, do you need to be in neutral, do you need to turn it on and then roll forward to lock the hubs, or do you just push a button and the computer does it all?
Don’t do 4WD donuts and break a CV shaft or anything, but play with it a bit, so you’re ready next time.
All props to Beta-chan!
When she was working on her learner’s permit three years ago, SunLass was doing the driving to a volleyball tournament a couple hours from our house - early morning on a Saturday, so the highway was pretty empty. But the one other car that was on the highway was going slow in the left lane, and it decided to move over as we were coming up on the right.
While I was getting “look out!” out of my mouth, SunLass braked hard and turned onto the shoulder, then straightened right back out again. When we caught our breath, she said she was good to keep driving, and made it the rest of the way without issue (though I did talk with her about ways to avoid passing on the right).
All of which is to say, it’s good to have concrete evidence that your offspring can make good snap decisions under time pressure and I’m glad you got to see Beta-chan in action (and, of course, avoid injury yourself as a result!)
My father was a railroader. He always said that if our car got stuck on the tracks at a crossing, get the hell out. Never mind anything else, just get the hell out. Maybe you could try pushing the car if no train was approaching, but if one was, just get away. He had seen a few cars struck by trains, and as he said, “The train always won, and anybody in the car lost.” Meaning that the best you can do is to just get out and get away.
Good on your daughter, and good on her school for teaching her railroad safety. I agree with my North American friends here that a safety button such as you describe would be too much of a temptation to American and Canadian kids to misuse. But I’m glad that you have them and that your daughter knew to use one when necessary. Well done, young lady!
Yep, and importantly run in an angle at least perpendicular to the direction of the approaching train, and in a shallow inclination towards its approach if you can manage it. When it hits the car, it’s possible it will throw it or large parts of it in the direction it’s traveling in. It’s best to stay as far outside of that cone of debris as you can.
And yeah, a button like that might be able to stop the commuter trains in my area in a reasonable amount of time, but they’re just going to be a “make the frieght train hit my car slower” button in a lot of situations in the US (if you can see it coming, it probably can’t stop in time). I’d totally get behind their use in the former case. The latter case is probably pretty great too, to be honest. But you’d be wise to get out of the car in either situation.
Thanks. It’s a Toyota minivan, it engages while moving. I just push a button and the computer does it all. It definately does help.
I’m sure most folks know this, but a search on YouTube for [train crossing crash] or similar will deliver hours of car- & truck-mangling fun. It’s funny as long as nobody got hurt. Which seems to be the usual case in the vids we actually get to see.
I recall reading an interview with a US locomotive engineer discussing the psychological trauma engineers suffer after killing somebody(ies). Which had happened to him, causing him to become a safety spokesman at schools, public meetings, internet vids, etc.
Among many tidbits of his terrible experience two items stuck with me.
The average US engineer will crash into a stuck motor vehicle at least once over a full career. You might get lucky and all the people got out before you crush their vehicle. But you might not. If you go into that line of work it will happen to you and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.
A typical US freight train outweighs a typical US heavy car or pickup truck by the same ratio that the car or pickup truck outweighs an empty beer can. The results on a collision are similar. The train accelerates and crushes the car/truck and contents as effortlessly as the car or truck slams and crushes an empty beer can.
Hey folks, be careful out there.
That’s a good way to visualize it.
And, living near the Caltrain tracks, I too have read about the sad, psychological effects these have on the engineers.
Silicon Valley is a stressful place. And once in a while people commit suicide by stepping in front of a Caltrain. Those poor engineers, I really feel for them.
Yes. That is not a kind way to commit suicide.
Not deliberate, I don’t think, but I don’t know if there’s any way to tell: some time ago a train hit and killed a pedestrian on the tracks not all that far from me. Autopsy said he was drunk; he was also deaf. It’s common to walk on the tracks around here because the trains are moving so slowly, and the tracks often provide a shortcut between houses that are a good bit further apart by road; but don’t do it if you don’t have your ears open!
Kids are better behaved in Japan than in the U.S.? I guess. Canada? Could be. But the population density in Japan is eleven times higher than in the U.S., let alone Canada. Even with Japan’s lower fertility rate, this makes me wonder if there might actually be more impulse-issue kids within walking distance of the average grade crossing in Japan as opposed to the U.S. and Canada. So if the buttons haven’t been at least trialed, in the U.S. and Canada, that’s a mistake.
The current U.S., and Canada, system seems to be a sign with an ten digit emergency phone number that is different for each railroad:
If the next train isn’t coming through for an hour, this should work.
There probably are some deceptive phone calls, but that’s not a reason to approach the problem in an ineffective way.
Kudos for the timely use of the emergency button.
I don’t understand how the train stopped so quickly. In the US the gates are seconds away from a train passing by when they’re down. The shortest train I’ve seen of late was 18 cars and the average is closer to 100 cars.
Japan runs a lot more passenger and commuter rail than the U.S. Lighter cars, shorter trains, more frequent stops means higher accel/decel.
U.S. freight trains are way heavier - a good rule of thumb for a fully-loaded freight train is that it can stop in the distance it is long, so 100 cars means over a mile stopping distance. Even U.S. long-distance passenger trains with 8-10 cars can take a mile to stop if they’re running full out at 79 mph.
I just learned yesterday that in Japan, less than 1% of trains are freight trains.
ETA: From this YouTube video, at around 10:15.
IIRC American passenger trains are heavier than their counterparts in the rest of the world, too. Something to so with safety requirements in the US.
Federal Railway Administration (FRA) rules for years focused on making sure equipment was soundly built - which is to say heavy - to protect passengers in the event of a crash. Meanwhile, cars used in high-speed sets around the world got lighter and lighter, and engineers in those countries designed cars with innovations similar to auto crumple zones and the like for crash survivability, while doing more engineering to keep crashes from happening at all.
The FRA passed in 2018 Tier III requirements for high-speed rail up to 220 mph (Tier II goes up to 160 mph) to make U.S. rules closer to European, for example, but of course it’s not a fast process to upgrade equipment, much less right-of-way - the highest speeds require dedicated tracks with no grade crossings. Also, since U.S. trains tend to run longer distances, they have more equipment for e.g. cooking on trains and the like which tends to increase weight as well.
Thanks. That makes sense.
Wow. 1%. And cool video.
I’m glad Beta-chan is more collected than I am. I probably would have frozen in fear.
As @SunUp suggests, it was a passenger train and not a freight train. I don’t remember exactly, but I think there would have been six cars.
It was an express train, and didn’t stop at the local train station, but they still slow down while going throw the station, so it wasn’t traveling at top speed.
We do get more freight trains here in Hokkaido because I live in a small town a couple of hours from Sapporo, and there are several freight trains passing through our day a day, but even so they are closer to 20 cars than 100.
In fact, U.S. freight trains have become increasingly long in recent years, as the freight railroads have changed how they staff and operate trains, seeking greater efficiency. This article indicates that the median freight train length is now 5,400 feet (i.e., a little over a mile), and trains up to 14,000 feet long aren’t uncommon. The train involved in the derailment and chemical leak in East Palestine, OH last year was 1.76 miles long.
Wow is that a badly written article. I wonder if a computer did it?
But the facts and the underlying points are legit.
I assume everyone has seen Dumb ways to die at this point. If not, it’s fun and relevant.