It’s unusual but not unheard of. Sometimes there are even serial numbers on barrels of pistols. Again, not the usual thing, but some manufacturers do it.
Here’s an example of a Glock like that:
A witness told police the crossing gate was down and the driver went around it to beat the traiin.
I’m looking at my 1937 Mauser Luger. It has a 4-digit number on the side of the receiver. The same number is on the front of the frame. The barrel has the same number on the bottom, near the base. The date (1937) is on the top of the frame, aft of the barrel. The front part of the toggle has S/42 and the last two digits of the s/n on it. The rear part of the toggle has the same two digits. Of course there are various proof-marks. One thing I can’t quite make out is on the plate on the left side of the receiver. It *looks& like it says ‘6y’. If I turn it upside-down, it looks like it might be ‘49’. I really can’t tell. The last two digits of the s/n are hand-scratched above the stamping, underneath the bluing. You have to hold it the light just right. The importer’s stamp on the left side of the receiver also has their own serial number.
Anyway, lots of serial numbers (or the last two digits) on the pistol.
What a dumb way to die.
Also a terrible thing to do to the person driving the train.
The dumbest way. Even if it doesn’t rhyme.
Not that it was a survivable incident* but all five were ejected from the SUV so they weren’t wearing seatbelts either.
In any event, what a gruesome scene that must have been.
*I refuse to call it an accident.
The train will sit for half a day or more while incident is investigated. The engineer/driver will be traumatized, and any passengers or customers waiting on freight will be inconvenienced, at best, and the whole neighborhood will be all snarled up. But, at least the suiciders got to go out in style.
I was going to mention the seatbelt issue–until I looked at the video–which shows the remains of the SUV.
I was referring to the trauma experienced by the train driver. I saw an article about this a couple of decades ago.
Our city has gotten at least two grants to install concrete medians to block vehicles from doing that. They were grants that we hadn’t applied for. The feds assigned them to the city and the railroad.
Official documents don’t call them accidents either. I mostly see them called collisions. Maybe they’re incidents during the investigation?
That looks like it went through a blender. Seat belts would not have done anything except make it a little easier to locate stuff to take DNA samples from. And not even much of that.
I did not see any mention of suicide in the article. Certainly, all five people were killed by the driver’s intentional action; but I think suicide involves the intention of killing one’s self.
Even in the IMO extremely unlikely chance the driver had a suicide plan, it’s a near certain bet that 4 of the 5 were not in on it.
So 4 counts of negligent homicide and one of Darwin Award-level stupidity.
There’s a line in some Stephen King novel (The Body?) in which the main character muses that if you take other people with you when you check out, you are posthumously awarded the Dogshit of the Year award.
Ref Paul_In_Saudi’s ongoing annual thread, there is a lot of dogshit being awarded in the USA.
To anyone on the train crew. When I used to take the train into Boston I got chatty with the regular conductor on various topics, and he told me engineers took it hard. Even though there’d never been any chance for them to avoid the crash they were burdened with the guilt and horror.
I was going to make some wisecrack about poster name and post when I read PastTense’s original post, but this really isn’t anything I feel like joking about.
Our lawyers might explain why “Death by Misadventure” never took hold in American law
As a railfan I have seen many photographs – and one real-life – of the aftermath of a train/auto collision. The lucky drivers beat the train to the crossing or maybe just get clipped as they leave.
The not so lucky drivers are too late and bounce off of the side of the locomotive. I’ve seen as far as the third one back.
The dead drivers had an exact tie and the vehicle gets ground to scrap as in the photo.