I saw this posted on another forum, and thought I'd post it here. This train miraculously stops just before hitting a car on the tracks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNrMKxr5050
Spartan-
That almost looks like a set-up. Stopping a loco and perhaps a cuple of thousand tons of train 18 inches from an obstacle is beyond a miracle. I can't help but wonder if the engineer could have actually stopped a bit sooner but dragged it out to the last second to put the fear of running crossing lights into the complete idiot who was on the tracks. Either that or God really does look out for fools.
-- D
I understand your doubt; I'm still having trouble believing it! I think that'd be too big of a set up to be kept a secret. Someone surely wouldve blabbed about it if it were. The conductor cussing out the driver also seemed pretty realistic ;D I'm sure the train wasn't going too fast, and the engineer probably saw the car on the tracks way back... I'm sure he knew the car just wasnt going to make it off the tracks. I would've found it funny though if the train had gone just a few inches further and left a big 'ole dent in his door :D
I hope the engineer got the drivers license plate number and reported the incident to the local police department as well as the Michigan Secretary of State's Office . The jerk needs his drivers license pulled . First of all he interfered with commercial traffic , he recklessly endangered everyone else in the area a well as himself
and cost the railroad and their customers money by delaying timely delivery . If I were the railroad I would sue the perp. J2.
"I can't help but wonder if the engineer could have actually stopped a bit sooner but dragged it out to the last second to put the fear of running crossing lights"
Not one chance in a billion that the engineer stopped so close on purpose. The bakes would have been on maximum. The driver of the car was lucky, unlike here in the UK today where someone in a car was just killed on a crossing where the train didn't manage to stop.
there would have been no reason for the engineer to draw out his stop. first off, trains can't "RUN' crossing signals. the circuits are set up to automatically turn on the lights and lower the gates when the train gets a certain distance away from the crossing. this is usually 1000 or more feet back from the road on a mainline. you'd have to stop the train further back than that to avoid triggering the circuit.
furthermore, when an engineer puts the brakes in "emergency" he has no further control of the train until the brakes are released. the train is going to stop, because there is no longer any air in the brake lines to hold the brakes off. the only other thing he could do is to put the locomotives in dynamic brake in the hopes of stopping a few feet sooner.the effect would be similar to downshifting your car while standing on the brake pedal.
i agree that whoever stopped on the tracks should have their license suspended. there is no reason to stop on the tracks....ever. as a commercial driver, i would definitely lose my license if i ever did this.
Quote from: jward on July 12, 2012, 01:03:45 PM
when an engineer puts the brakes in "emergency" he has no further control of the train until the brakes are released.
jeff-
But do we know that the brakes were in emergency mode? No. I still think it's more than merely possible that the
engineer didn't need emergency brakes and just crept up as close as he could get.
-- D
Maybe the vehicle driver was trying to win the Darwin Award. Many have over the years. Also, you cannot fix stupid. Vehicles are being hit quite a lot at crossings. It will happen again. You cannot fix it.
Rich
i have known many engineers over the years. most if not all of them would have "big holed" the train rather than hit a vehicle. not only do you have to live with killing somebody, because vehicles hit by trains aalmost always result in fatalities, btu you also have everybody second guessing what you did or didn't do. you will relive the incident over and over, because the lawyers will have you tiesd up in depositions for years. it's not worth the risk just to scare somenody.
Quote from: richg on July 12, 2012, 05:35:49 PM
Vehicles are being hit quite a lot at crossings. It will happen again.
Rich
Yep, just heard of a truck/train incident early today in South Africa, 2 dozen dead, more injured. A truck carring farm workers tried to beat the train at the crossing and failed.
Alan
About two years or so ago, in Amherst MA, a couple young teen girls jumped on the tracks and quickly jumped off as they saw and heard an Amtrak coming. There are a few road crossing and the driver sounds the horns. Think the speed is about 60 mph at that spot. The driver set the e stop from what I can tell from the video. A train watcher who does a lot of video taping in the area just happened to be there. This was on the local news and newspaper. The video is probably still in You Tube.
A older women gave to two girls a what for.
The Bach Man lives not to far from this spot. He might know more details as the authorities where looking into it as I never heard anymore about this issue.
You get bored, search You Tube for train crossing accidents.
Rich
Rich, I believe this is the video you are talking about:
http://youtube.com/?reload=2&rdm=m6f91i5du#/watch?v=gyIW0r3-ruA
NO grade crossing accident is ever the fault of the engineer in charge of the train.
All he or she can do is put the train into emergency. After that, it's out of the engineer's hands.
Sure, the lawyers suing the railroad will argue that the brakes should have could have been applied earlier and that's their job, to get a settlement for the idiot or the idiot's family who was driving the car but they were not in the cab.
Yes, there have been grade crossing accidents where the railroad has been found negligent, as have municipalities and highways departments because the grade crossing has been deemed poorly designed or poorly maintained etc.. How many grade crossings have you seen that have traffic lights either on one side or both sides of the grade crossing where vehicles could get trapped? Yes, the traffic lights and grade crossing signals are supposed to be interlocked but some of these styles of grade crossing are so poorly designed that a driver can easily become confused, with tragic results.
the lawy gjers need to review Newton's Laws of Motion! gj
Never under any circumstances begin to cross a railroad track unless there is already plenty of room for your vehicle on the far side of the tracks. This applies even if there is no train in sight or hearing. Use the Stop! Look! And listen! rule if there are no crossing lights or gates.
There is only one reason for grade crossing crashes: Driver stupidity. And while I'm all for improving the gene pool, I abhor the consequences for innocent victims in the idiots' vehicles, the typically ridiculous litigation and the heartbreak for loved ones. Since it's probably impossible to stupid proof every grade crossing, let's be thankful that there aren't so many crossings any more. Aggressive enforcement of violators and persistent public education might help but I see no evidence of either. I can't understand this complacency because grade crossing crashes are ugly. When was the last time you heard of one after which the survivors were treated and released from a local hospital? Probably never because there are few survivors to take to a hospital and those few are unlikely to be candidates for treated and released.
-- D
the biggest vistims are the train crews. they are the ones who are first on the scene. they view the carnage knowing they were responsible. even though it was out of your control, you still live with the nightmare especially if there were kids in the car.
Did actually happen here in Marengo , IL several years ago . Woke up late one morning to see several rescue vehicles on the street outside my bedroom . I got dressed & went outside to see what happened . Discovered a mile long freight train on the tracks with the locos about a half mile up the road and a vehicle in the ditch adjacent . Vehicle had a ding in the rear passenger side trunk . Since the crossing is the last one on the westside of town and the track has warning flashers and the visability is about a quarter of a mile east of the crossing and miles to the west I wondered how the driver missed seeing the train . The freight trains are only doing about 30-40 MPH and blow their horns at about a dozen crossings through town so they are definitely audible . I talked to the county sherrifs and the rescue squad and found out there was one victim the driver who was banged up and taken to the nearest medical establishment . They said he would recover so I asked how drunk was he ? They put in barricades shortly there after to keep people from pushing their Luck . I live at the end of Railroad Steet
A not insignificant number of driver-only vehicle train crashes are suicide attempts, just like the driver only bridge abuttment crashes. The authorities usually label these as accidents in order to spare their families from the awful truth. I'm not sure that this is a completely good thing.
-- D
"The authorities usually label these as accidents in order to spare their families from the awful truth"
Do they? Do you mean that when there's an inquest that the officials lie under oath? Where does your information come from?
Lacking a suicide note or other hard evidence, to label one of these incidents as anything other than an accident would be pure speculation of the victim's motives on the part of the authorities.
Quote from: poliss on July 17, 2012, 05:38:39 AM
Do they? Do you mean that when there's an inquest that the officials lie under oath? Where does your information come from?
poliss-
I worked in so-called suicide prevention for many years and have been part of psychological post mortems on numerous occasions. There is nothing particularly secret about this perhaps surprising reality, at least in the human services/psychiatric community.
Please note that I'm not defending this behavior; I'm not convinced that deception, however well intentioned (and I absolutely believe it's well intentioned), is always advantageous to the survivors over the long term. It does spare them some of the heartbreak and may help spouses and children obtain insurance proceeds, but I question whether letting people believe a falsehood is invariably good for them. I'm also not content that, in the case of railroad-assisted suicides for example, railroad personnel are left believing that they may have caused a death, or that huge, fundamentally unfair financial settlements may follow. And the legal issues also apply in the case of highway suicides and police-assisted suicides.
-- D
wrongful death lawsuits are a fact of life for the railroads. lawyers fish for something, anything that would show the railroad at fault, the railroads are viewed as having deep pockets. among the issues looked at: was the horn sounded, were the speed limits obeyed, were the brakes applied at the time of impact. and you'd have to be a cold hearted person to run somebody over and not feel anything.
during my time on the railroad i was involved in a couple of incidents. in one, a man in perfectly good healthwalked out in front of a train at a grade crossing, looking right at the locomotive the whole time. if that's not a suicide i don't know what is. in the other incident, i relieved a train crew who had just hit a 6 year old buy on a bike. he was lucky, he didn't sustain life threatening injuries. but the look on the engineer's face said it all.
People are idiots. I ride my bike down a service road that paralles a set of active tracks, just about every day on the way home when I get to where the tracks cross a busy street I find cars stopped on the tracks waiting for the traffiic light to change, I recently hooked up a dual tone airhorn to a rechargable 12v battery so I have a horn that cars will stop for while I am on my commute. When I see them sitting clueless on the tracks I give it a long blast, you should see them jump. I think I may video tape it next week and post it I think you all would enjoy seeing it.
NM-Jeff
Narrow Minded : Please Do. Your right, there far to many idiots abroad in the world . They never switch on their brains when they leave the house & then wonder why they get killed when they don't pay attention to reality. Nature is not out to get us personally , but it is out to get us . Darwin's Law always applies. J2.
I am a retired locomotive engineer. It is hard for me to imagine a situation where a train would be driven into an automobile on purpose.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible to bring a train to a controlled stop at a crossing. This happens many times, for instance, when a train stops at a crossing to change crews. This, of course, takes some advance planning.
Even though the driver of the automobile may deserve a Darwin Award, the other people in the car do not. And there is always much fallout from a road crossing accident: reports, delays, event recorder downloads and analysis, possible drug testing.
All this even if the engineer was clearly not at fault (the railroad needs documentation to protect itself from lawyers).
Once a train is put into "emergency", control over it is lost. This is why it is a last resort. It is possible damage to the train may result (flat wheels). The engineer can only bail the independent brake to avoid a severe slack run-in. Only units with extended-range dynamic brakes will continue to slow a train at low speed. The engineer will lose throttle control until the brake system times out and can be reset.
Les
This has nothing to do with railroads but the railroads are faced with people like this. A plant in Oklahoma filed bankruptcy. They made gasoline cans. They got sued by people who poured gasoline on a fire. They had three warning labels about not mixing gasoline and fire. They sued because design defect. Now 117 people are out of a job.