Police dash cam of a NS Train crushing a van.
See video in the attached link.
http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2016/03/16/Van-destroyed-by-train-seconds-after-police-officer-chases-driver-away/9101458140699/
Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do back at the AT&T shop!
As Bugs Bunny used to say, "What a maroon!"
Paging Mr Darwin, Mr. Darwin please...
Here we go again with maligning crossing vctims: "idiot" "darwin, darwin." Does that make you feel better?
So how about the thread on here about the Amtrak employee that was killed recently by a train? An Amtrak employee was struck and killed by a New Jersey Transit train during Tuesday’s early-morning commute. The incident happened at about 4:45 a.m. as the train passed through New Brunswick, NJ. The train was carrying about 300 passengers from Trenton to Penn Station in Manhattan. The Amtrak employee was working on the tracks, which are part of the Northeast Corridor and shared by Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. Amtrak officials are investigating the incident.
He, more than ordinary folks, should have known better about the dangers of standing on a track. Double standard?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Can't speak for everyone else, but I never said a thing about that Amtrak employee.
Firelock76 Can't speak for everyone else, but I never said a thing about that Amtrak employee.
Of course not. You would not. And that is my point. Nobody ever suggested he was a Darwin winner or mentally defective. And they should not have. But an ordinary civilian's death at a crossing brings out the ghoul squad on here
steve24944 Police dash cam of a NS Train crushing a van. See video in the attached link. http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2016/03/16/Van-destroyed-by-train-seconds-after-police-officer-chases-driver-away/9101458140699/
Neither the Cop or the Driver of the hung up vehicle showed all that much situational awareness as they moved in the direction of the trains travel and could have been hit by the vehicle as a secondary impact after the train struck the vehicle - fortunately the truck continued with the train after the initial impact.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
I see a couple issues here.
The tractor trailer driver also went across the crossing without adequate space to clear the tracks. AT&T Van shouldn't have been following blindly, but got trapped on the tracks, too. Looks like he panicked and tried to get off the tracks.
Is that traffic light tied into the crossing? If it is, it looks like it didn't change (going by the reaction of the cars) until the gates were already dropping. Not good. Granted nobody should be stopped on the tracks to begin with, but these crossigns next to intersections like that are messed up.
Good job on the officer. I hope he gets some recognition. As far as going towards the oncoming train - perhaps a public awareness campaign is needed?
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.
The driver was cited for ignoring the lights - remember that the lights start well before the gates start down. He had plenty of time to stop.
http://fox8.com/2016/03/11/driver-cited-for-ignoring-lights-after-train-hits-van-in-brook-park/
On top of that, he tried going around the truck on the right side. If he was concerned about getting off the crossing, the pavement on the left side was the safer bet.
The crossing is here: N 41 23' 49" W 81 50' 32"
Here is the criteria for an actual "Darwin Award:" "In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival." Local officials acknowledged that he was a candidate by citing him for his bone-headed actions.
"In the spirit of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards commemorate individuals who protect our gene pool by making the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives. Darwin Award winners eliminate themselves in an extraordinarily idiotic manner, thereby improving our species' chances of long-term survival."
Local officials acknowledged that he was a candidate by citing him for his bone-headed actions.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
People make mistakes. Sometimes it is stupidity, but I think more often it's a naive lack of understanding of the real situation. As for the Amtrak employee, I understand trains were running wrong main that day. Was there a lack of communication? Was he so used to thinking in terms of right-hand running that he failed to adjust his thinking? I'm sure we'll never know, but I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he's not around to defend his actions.
By the way, death is not the only way to qualify for a Darwin Award. One can do so by rendering oneself incapable of reproducing, thus removing oneself from the gene pool, and a number of people have "won" the award in that way.
Tom
ACY People make mistakes. Sometimes it is stupidity, but I think more often it's a naive lack of understanding of the real situation. As for the Amtrak employee, I understand trains were running wrong main that day. Was there a lack of communication? Was he so used to thinking in terms of right-hand running that he failed to adjust his thinking? I'm sure we'll never know, but I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he's not around to defend his actions. By the way, death is not the only way to qualify for a Darwin Award. One can do so by rendering oneself incapable of reproducing, thus removing oneself from the gene pool, and a number of people have "won" the award in that way. Tom
In the case of railroad employees being killed in incidents that defy the understanding of fellow employees in how it could happen - some desire that their final statement on earth being something that stains the record of the company that employs them. Suicide is something that is difficult to 'prove' in railroad operations as a simple 'legitmate' oversight can fully explain the happening.
BaltACD ACY People make mistakes. Sometimes it is stupidity, but I think more often it's a naive lack of understanding of the real situation. As for the Amtrak employee, I understand trains were running wrong main that day. Was there a lack of communication? Was he so used to thinking in terms of right-hand running that he failed to adjust his thinking? I'm sure we'll never know, but I'd prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, he's not around to defend his actions. By the way, death is not the only way to qualify for a Darwin Award. One can do so by rendering oneself incapable of reproducing, thus removing oneself from the gene pool, and a number of people have "won" the award in that way. Tom In the case of railroad employees being killed in incidents that defy the understanding of fellow employees in how it could happen - some desire that their final statement on earth being something that stains the record of the company that employs them. Suicide is something that is difficult to 'prove' in railroad operations as a simple 'legitmate' oversight can fully explain the happening.
Thank you!! A very thoughtful and compassionate comment. Do we not owe the same to non-rail folks killed in rail RoW incidents?
Would the same amount of scorn be piled on to those who die in traffic accidents? Is the poor lady who misjudged something on the highway and gets killed in a car accident a prime candidate for derision?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy Siding Would the same amount of scorn be piled on to those who die in traffic accidents? Is the poor lady who misjudged something on the highway and gets killed in a car accident a prime candidate for derision?
Absolutely not.
I should hope not!!
Let's back up a bit here.
Certainly a trackside death is nothing to laugh at or make jokes about, I wouldn't do it and I'm sure most of the posters here wouldn't do it either, it would certainly indicate an unhealthy level of hard-heartedness to say nothing of being in bad taste, however THIS particular incident is another matter.
No-one died or was injured, it was more like a "Demolition Derby" between a locomotive and a van, a prime candidate for inclusion on an "America's Dumbest" TV show. It could have ended badly but didn't, thank God, so in my opinion it's OK to make jokes or snarky comments.
I'm reminded of the old circus clown rule, "If it bends, it's funny. If it breaks, it ain't funny." Aside from the AT&T van, nothing "broke" here.
Honestly though, in the case of a trackside tresspasser death my REAL sympathies go out to the head-end crews. I can't imagine what it's like to be in a situation where you know something terrible's going to happen and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.
Murphy Siding Is the poor lady who misjudged something on the highway and gets killed in a car accident a prime candidate for derision?
Is the poor lady who misjudged something on the highway and gets killed in a car accident a prime candidate for derision?
If she tried to make a U turn on a busy Interstate from the right lane, across three lanes of high speed traffic to the "No U Turn" U turn because she missed her exit because she was talking on her cell phone, then yes.
Balt's note notwithstanding, Darwin awardees have generally suffered their fate as the result of some action that totally defies logic at pretty much any level - like the copper thieves who try to steal wire while it's still in use, carrying thousands of volts at who knows how many amps. Or jumping a fence (after several warnings to the contrary) and swimming across the moat to the tiger enclosure at a zoo...
On the other hand, the judges at Darwin Awards ruled that an incident involving a fellow who said the gun was empty, then pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger, was "too common."
It's hard sometimes to define a potential Darwin Award recipient, but usually you know one when you see one...
Euclid's characterization of "sanctimonious and immature" put me in mind of myself a number of years ago. One Sunday, when the minister of our church was on vacation, we had a substitute minister. He had been retired for quite awhile and was considerably older than our own minister. When it came time for the scripture reading, he read somewhat more slowly than I was used to hearing; and several times he paused briefly in the middle of sentences. After the service, I mentioned to one of the other members that I was disappointed that we had been provided with a minister who was so advanced in years that he had difficulty reading the Bible. The member replied that the difficulty was probably due to the fact that the elderly minister was reading, and translating as he read, the original Greek. I can't say that this experience prevented me from being sanctimonious or immature in the future; however it did reduce the frequency.
JayPotter Euclid's characterization of "sanctimonious and immature" put me in mind of myself a number of years ago. One Sunday, when the minister of our church was on vacation, we had a substitute minister. He had been retired for quite awhile and was considerably older than our own minister. When it came time for the scripture reading, he read somewhat more slowly than I was used to hearing; and several times he paused briefly in the middle of sentences. After the service, I mentioned to one of the other members that I was disappointed that we had been provided with a minister who was so advanced in years that he had difficulty reading the Bible. The member replied that the difficulty was probably due to the fact that the elderly minister was reading, and translating as he read, the original Greek. I can't say that this experience prevented me from being sanctimonious or immature in the future; however it did reduce the frequency.
As for Darwin, in this case yes it is a good comparison. The driver ignored the warning lights and drove off pavement.
Had this been an unsignaled crossing with no warning of oncoming train, then that would be different.
Modeling the Cleveland and Pittsburgh during the PennCentral era starting on the Cleveland lakefront and ending in Mingo junction
schlimm Here we go again with maligning crossing vctims: "idiot" "darwin, darwin." Does that make you feel better? So how about the thread on here about the Amtrak employee that was killed recently by a train? An Amtrak employee was struck and killed by a New Jersey Transit train during Tuesday’s early-morning commute. The incident happened at about 4:45 a.m. as the train passed through New Brunswick, NJ. The train was carrying about 300 passengers from Trenton to Penn Station in Manhattan. The Amtrak employee was working on the tracks, which are part of the Northeast Corridor and shared by Amtrak and New Jersey Transit. Amtrak officials are investigating the incident. He, more than ordinary folks, should have known better about the dangers of standing on a track. Double standard?
I can't say anything about the Amtrak employee since I am not familiar with that incident, but I would like to say something about calling crossing "victims" idiots, etc.
I don't classify everybody who is in a crossing accident as an idiot or Darwin candidate. For example, in high school a friend of mine was killed in a crossing accident during our sophomore year just south of our high school (http://chatanuga.org/HOL.html). He, like everybody else in the area, fell into the trap of believing that there would never be a train at that crossing before classes started.
My bus went through the crossing literally a minute or two before the crash. As into trains as I am, I'll admit that I even stopped hoping to see a train at the crossing since in the nearly five years that my morning bus ride went through the crossing, there'd never been a train. That morning, I could see the approach-lit ex-Pennsy signal to the west of the crossing lit up for a westbound on Conrail's former Pennsy route west of my hometown of Bucyrus, Ohio. I didn't see the train, which I thought at the time was going to be a freight train, not thinking that Amtrak would be coming through that late in the morning.
Shortly after our bus went through the crossing, protected only by crossbucks and stop signs, Dale's car had turned north onto that road as he'd been doing every morning since turning 16 that previous December (the accident was in March 1990). As he approached the crossing, the kids in the car behind him saw the train and saw that Dale wasn't applying the brakes. He was also only going about 50 MPH, under the 55 MPH speed limit. There was no indication that he even looked or saw the train. The engineer of Amtrak's westbound Capitol Limited saw Dale pass the advanced warning sign without slowing and hit the brakes and held down on the horn. There were slight skid marks leading up to the crossing about at the crossbuck and stop sign, possibly from Dale seeing the train and hitting the brakes at the last second. He impacted the lead truck of the first F40PH on the train. The front of his car was twisted upside down to the rest of the car and shoved into the passenger compartment killing him. The car was flung into the edge of the field along the tracks.
We found out at school later that morning what had happened. Needless to say, it was quite difficult to deal with. For a long time afterwards, I went through what I believe would be called "survivor's guilt", thinking that had I taken just a little longer getting on the bus that morning that we would have been stopped at that crossing with Dale stopped behind us. It was only a few years ago that I finally told myself that there was nothing that I could have done that morning to have prevented what happened.
So, do I call Dale an idiot for running the stop signs at the crossing? No. He was a relatively new driver, and he fell into the trap of thinking every drive to school at that time would be the same. In other words, he made a mistake. Except for times when I remember seeing trains on that route, the only vehicles that I remember ever seeing stop for the stop signs at the crossing were school buses (and anybody behind them). Some people didn't learn to stop at the crossing, even after the crash, until they got ticketed in a sting operation the sheriff's office set up on the crossing. Unfortunately for Dale, he learned his lesson by paying the ultimate price for his mistake.
To me, the idiots in crossing accidents are the people who are ignoring the flashing lights, gates, etc. and trying to save time and beat a train. Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they live and hopefully learn their lesson before it's too late for them. Unfortunately, some take innocent victims with them like in the crash in Michigan a few years ago where a car went around stopped vehicles and a lowered gate in front of an Amtrak train and got hit in the side and shoved down the track, killing the driver and all four passengers, who I believe were innocent victims unless they were encouraging the driver to go around and not wait. Words alone can't begin to describe the anger I get when I see somebody risking their life and those around them at a crossing just because they feel that it's worth risking their life and the lives of their passengers to keep from having to wait a couple minutes. So often I wish they could just see the picture of Dale's car after the crash (http://chatanuga.org/pics/ol/hol6.jpg) and see what could happen to them because of their stupidity and risk taking.
As was said about Dale's crash, he wasn't being an idiot and trying to beat the train. Yes, he should have stopped for the stop signs at the crossing, and maybe he did when he started driving that route. Yes, he should have heard the train's horn, but if he was in the trap of never expecting a train, he quite possibly had the radio on, drowning out the sound of the horn, especially with the windows up. With so little experience on the road, he forgot to expect the unexpected.
The thing I see when I see people making bad decisions around railroad crossings, whether they are trying to beat a train to save time or simply making a mistake, is what I see elsewhere whenever I'm on the road. People have to put down their cell phones, pay attention to driving their vehicle, and be aware of what is going on around them.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
Please accept my condolences. Then think of your friend. Dale, every time you hear someone complain about the police trying to fill some imaginary quota by enforcing traffic laws instead of fighting "real" crime. No one thinks that ignoring an inconvenient traffic law is going to end, or change their life forever. 30,000 people a year are wrong. The pain goes far beyond the person or people who died in the collision. Trauma is also experienced by the friends and family of the deceased, the EMS personel who have to pick up the pieces, the Police Officer who has to knock on the door and notify the next of kin, and the Engineer who will have nightmares reliving it unfolding in front of him/her as he watches helplessly.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
chatanugaAs was said about Dale's crash, he wasn't being an idiot and trying to beat the train.
Thank you for sharing a moving story. I hope that will finally put an end to the name-calling of accident victims on here.
schlimmThank you for sharing a moving story. I hope that will finally put an end to the name-calling of accident victims on here.
I don't think that most of us call accident victims names. Accidents are just that, accidents. But true accidents are rare - they are incidents in which none of the participants have any control over the situation.
More often are incidents in which someone's failure to act in an appropriate manner for the situation at hand causes a problem. Those are not accidents (although they often referred to as such), and the perpetrators of these incidents are not victims.
It's the people whose actions thoroughly violate the norms of common sense that we tend to call names.
You don't check how much gasoline is in the can with a match...
tree68 schlimm Thank you for sharing a moving story. I hope that will finally put an end to the name-calling of accident victims on here. I don't think that most of us call accident victims names. Accidents are just that, accidents. But true accidents are rare - they are incidents in which none of the participants have any control over the situation. More often are incidents in which someone's failure to act in an appropriate manner for the situation at hand causes a problem. Those are not accidents (although they often referred to as such), and the perpetrators of these incidents are not victims. It's the people whose actions thoroughly violate the norms of common sense that we tend to call names. You don't check how much gasoline is in the can with a match...
schlimm Thank you for sharing a moving story. I hope that will finally put an end to the name-calling of accident victims on here.
I am just curious. What if someone fails to act in an appropriate manner for the situation at hand because they had a short lapse of attention to the situation at hand? I am talking about one of those mistakes like when somebody cuts a finger off in a saw. Would you say that person had control over the situation or not?
Is that person a perpetrator of an incident or just someone who was the victim of an accident?
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