Car hits Train

[vsmith]

Dont know if this has already been posted but....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enkh9A5jdUI 

This could be the stupidest person on the face of the planet. Not only does he completly miss the big steel rolly thingy crossing the road, but Tom Slick is also driving on the wrong side of the painted liney thingy in middle of the road...wouldnt you have loved to hear the drivers explaination???

Driver...FAIL

[ungern]

The driver and his lawyer would probably say that he had the right of way and that the train is a hazard to the public.

 

Seriously though he sould consider himself lucky that the train was going slow and he didn't end up under it.  At least there is a video available that shows who's at fault and his insurance should pay for damage to the train.

Ungern

[wabash1]

A good lawyer will say that the crossing was not marked that the flashing lights was not enough to properly protect the crossing and that there was no crewman flaging the crossing for the slow moving train and that there was not enough horn blowing to get the drivers attention that the destractions to the drivers left was what cause him not to see the train. and since it a no fault state just because they was there they are at fault that if the train was not there he would not have hit the train and my client is not guilty of hitting your train your train backed into my clients car.

[kbathgate]

That's a good one - it would be interesting to know whether the motorist was entirely sober at the time, or whether there was any issue with their eyesight. A retired police officer friend once told me a story about a gentleman he dealt with who had driven into the back of a double decker bus at a bus stop - the driver explained to officers that he had been driving very slowly because the fog was so thick, but that he hadn't seen the bus because it didn't have its lights on.  It was a bright sunny day...

Personally I've always rather enjoyed this one from this side of the pond:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3kjiEswbik

It's not the best image (which is why you can't see the lights flashing), but it's amusing because no-one was hurt, and the driver of the three-wheeler shows a certain lack of awareness even after the accident - he seems to think he's broken down!

[CShaveRR]

Sometimes more elderly folk have this lack of awareness--that guy was extremely lucky. Several years ago I was hit on my bike by a little old lady in a powder blue Cadillac; she then drove off. While I was on the ground I managed to roll over and catch her license plate number (it started with "SP" and made me think of an SD45!). Anyway, after giving the police the number and being asked to come down to the station, I met the lady (who was also invited). She claims she never saw me, in spite of the fact that I was much closer to her windshield than would have otherwise been possible--but she did blame me for the tire marks on her bumper! I later sought treatment for what turned out to be a broken toe, and I also carry the scar under my eyebrow to this day.

As to the original incident, did the impact actually cause the passenger car to rock that much, or was this just photographer/camera motion? Either way, one has to think about what would happen if the unaware driver were behind the wheel of something heavier--a concrete mixer, for instance.

[zardoz]

CShaveRR

Sometimes more elderly folk have this lack of awareness...I was hit on my bike by a little old lady in a powder blue Cadillac......She claims she never saw me.

I have always been in favor of road tests for driver license renewals after age 60.  Some of these fossils should not be driving!  Driving is a privilege, not a right.

[WSOR 3801]

 I've been looking for a car like that too.  Darn the bad luck, might've bent the frame on that hit.  Looks like an '88-89, 90-91 had a driver's side airbag.  (although this driver looked to be an airbag) 

[WSORatSussex]

Agreed;

I almost got backed over by one 2 days ago...luckily she was moving at about 2 mph!

 

Ed

[henry6]

An engineer friend of mine once told me of an incident at a desolate PA crossing when a woman drove her car onto the tracks in front of his train and he hit her...luckily it was on a slow order track.  But her response was that in New Jersey where she was from automobiles always had the right of way over trains!  I don't know if she is still alive. 

[greyhounds]

zardoz

[I have always been in favor of road tests for driver license renewals after age 60.  Some of these fossils should not be driving!  Driving is a privilege, not a right.

60 is a little young.  The safest drivers on the road are aged 50-64.  (This from my current employment in the insurance industry.)  We've got decades of experience, we don't take a lot of risks, and we've still got the eyesight and reflexes.

[zardoz]

greyhounds

zardoz

[I have always been in favor of road tests for driver license renewals after age 60.  Some of these fossils should not be driving!  Driving is a privilege, not a right.

60 is a little young.  The safest drivers on the road are aged 50-64.  (This from my current employment in the insurance industry.)  We've got decades of experience, we don't take a lot of risks, and we've still got the eyesight and reflexes.

Perhaps on average we are, but I do know that my 'eyesight and reflexes' are not what they were when I was 30 or 40 (I'm 55).  And I see many of my peers who are physically in their 50s drive as though the're mentally in their 70s.

I know I do not drive as aggressively as   I used to; not only because I realize that whatever risk I take while driving is not worth the negligible (if any) gains resulting from such behavior, but also because I have noticed a few occasions where I did something stupid that has caused me to re-evaluate my own perception of the infallibility of my driving skills. Thus I drive just a bit slower now to allow myself that extra split-second of evaluation and reaction time.

[jeaton]

zardoz

 

I have always been in favor of road tests for driver license renewals after age 60.  Some of these fossils should not be driving!  Driving is a privilege, not a right.

I resemble that remark!!

I am 68 and still may be spotted doing 10 over on open roads with little traffic.  (20 over on 55MPH freeways in the Metro Chicago area, but I don't want to get run over there.)  But put me very in heavy traffic, or situations with potential problems and you will find me at or below the speed limit and leaving more room to make an emergency stop.

Illinois requires frequent retesting for senior people.  I don't know the exact age when that starts but it makes much sense.  Wisconsin is nuts.  If your eyesight passes the test and you pass a simple written test, your good for another eight years.  My 95 year old mother still has a WI license and she hasn't driven for at least 30 years.  Fortunately, she has no need or desire to drive a car.

 

[locoi1sa]

 On Cape Cod there are a lot of senior drivers that have mistook the brake and accelerator lately. Many banks and other buildings are putting the steel encased concrete poles up around the buildings to keep the cars from making drive through' s where there were none before. Just last week a 92 yo backed over his 89 yo wife while backing from a parking spot. Last year an alshiemer patient went missing for 2 weeks and was found frozen at a closed up summer home 30 miles from his house. He still had a valid drivers license.

  I have a CDL and have to take a physicle every 2 years to keep it. Yet some 90 year old man who takes more medicine than a pharmacy stocks can buy and drive an RV the size of a Greyhound buss and go any where he wants.

  The Pols are too chicken to establish testing for seniors because they vote and young drivers do not.

       Pete

[ButchKnouse]

I had an uncle who was all but blind and in his 80s and Nebraska SENT him a new driver's license in the mail. He didn't even have to go in. It's only a miracle he never killed anybody. They couldn't keep hired men on the farm because they were scared of getting run over.

[AgentKid]

ButchKnouse

SENT him a new driver's license

 

I saw this and I had to post.

During WWII when there was a shortage of able bodied men at home, my grandfather needed a man to drive a pickup truck for his small business. He went to the RCMP in the small Saskatchewan town where they lived and asked them if it would be OK if his 14 year old son, my father, could drive the truck. Without so much as meeting him they said it would be OK as long as he didn't cause any trouble.

Then at age 15 my father drove his first semi truck to pick up some farm machinery at the railway loading platform at the larger centre near them. When he was 16 he came home from school and my grandfather said there was a letter for him. It was his first drivers license, and not only had my dad not taken any sort of test, he had not filled out a single document or signed his name on anything! My grandfather had gone back to the RCMP and taken care of it for him.

In 1947 when my dad started working for the CPR in Alberta he went to the Motor Vehicles Branch and showed them his SK license and they mailed him a new AB one. In 1953 when my parents moved to Hatton, SK he went to the license people and showed them his AB license and they mailed him a new SK license.. Then when we moved to Irricana, AB in 1956, he went to the Motor Vehicles Branch, showed them his SK license and they mailed him a new AB license.

Now when my father turned 60 in 1988 he had to report for a physical and an eye test. If you have been keeping track up to this point, you know that he has never actually taken a driving test! So he comes in with his note from his doctor and now it is time to take the vision test. My father cannot pass the vision without his glasses, which he has been wearing long before he was 14. His drivers license does not say glasses are required.

Well at this point the roof caved in, and the clerk wants to know how come my dad doesn't have a glasses requirement on his license. My dad tells the story and the clerk calls in his manager, and my dad tells the story again. Now, the manager has to call a senior government official from a building downtown to come out to hear my dad tell the story again. This took something like three hours. Much talking ensued behind closed doors and my dad is finally issued a new Drivers License with a glasses requirement.

And sadly he passed away before he reached 70 when he would have had to take a road test. During his driving career he never had a moving violation and had two Act of God accidents. He hit a horse that had broken out of it's pasture in the 1940's and slid into another car while on ice during a blizzard in 1984.

AgentKid

 

[Deggesty]

Back in 1959, whatever department in Georgia that was responsible for drivers' licenses sent my then sixty-six year old uncle a new license (at no cost, because he was a veteran)--and, so far as I know, he had not driven a car for several years, but relied on his wife to drive. When I visited them that year, I drove him to the places he needed to go.  

That same summer, a couple of family friends from Charleston, S. C. stopped at our home on their way up to their summer home east of Asheville. They asked me if I would be willing to drive them the rest of the way, and I did. I realized that the man could not see to drive, and his wife, who had never had a license, would tell him how to drive (they were both at least in their seventies). I do not know how he had been able to have his license renewed.

As it is now, in Utah, you hae to appear only every other time for renewal and take an eye test. Thus, you can drive for ten years even if you are blind.

Johnny

[Sunnyland]

That was really a stupid driver.  He had a good view of the train and it was coming slowly or he'd been in bad shape.  Some people really don't belong behind the wheel of a car.

[BaltACD]

zardoz

I have always been in favor of road tests for driver license renewals after age 60.  Some of these fossils should not be driving!  Driving is a privilege, not a right.

With Boomer's 60 is what 40 was a generation or two ago.  At 62 I have to get a yearly physical examination in order to renew my road racing license and race 10 to 12 times a year at race tracks all around the country.  Let's not forget in most areas 65 is the nominal retirement age.  'Old Age' seems to be settling in at about 75 in today's world.  Your mileage may vary!