http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-2-injured-when-pickup-collides-with-train-20110703,0,6360030.story
Gated crossing, 2:53 am; alcohol suspected. Fortunately this driver caused accident wasn't at 11:25pm, at a higher speed striking a Metra train with many passengers onboard returning home from Taste of Chicago.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
The National Transportation Safety Board recently divulged a they had funded with the U.S. auto makers for the past five years.The NTSB covertly funded a project whereby the auto makers were installing black boxes in four wheel drive pick-up trucks in an effort to determine, in fatal accidents, the circumstances in the last 15 seconds before the crash.They were surprised to find in 49 of the 50 states the last words of drivers in 61.2% of fatal crashes were, "Oh, ****!"Only the State of Texas was different, where 89.3% of the final words were, "Hey, hold my beer.
The sad fact is, you can put up crossing gates, bells, lights, sirens, warning horns, loudspeakers, rumble strips, even speed bumps, but in the end you can't save some people from themselves. Nothing new in this, it started back in the days of the rise of the auto, and drivers didn't have a horse to help them with their thinking anymore.
And in the remaining % of the cases, likely the final words were: "Hey, you all, watch this !"
Honestly I'm just beyond sick of the whole grade crossing safety discussion - as mentioned previously in this thread you can put down gates, light up the lights, sound the bell, but some idiot will always want to make it across.
When it comes to safety, as in most things in life, there is a law of diminishing returns where our efforts are better spent elsewhere rather than fretting about why people ran crossing gates. Fact is, as long as the gates were working it doesn't really matter why someone ran them it's their own stupid$1***$2that did.
I saw some kids playing on Illinois Railway tracks today - playing in the spilled silica sand between the rails...
Seriously parents? I'm only 25 so I'm not old by any means but my parents taught me when it comes to train tracks always look both ways and make sure there is no train coming, and if you're on the tracks then be very alert regarding trains. To let small children play on the tracks? No wonder these people grow into adults WITHOUT a healthy respect for trains....
Buy a sandbox... seriously! I shed no tears for people killed / injured who run the gates.
We should have started 50 years ago eliminating crossings. Instead we are still building more of them. Too many people are too stupid to deal with crossings.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
sawtooth: Shedding tears and children playing on the tracks aren't what this thread and the Nevada thread were about. It was about protecting the trains from irresponsible drivers.
Phoebe Vet We should have started 50 years ago eliminating crossings. Absolutely Instead we are still building more of them. I believe that may be incorrect. Some of you posters can maybe cite more but I know that not a sigle new crossing has been built anywhere near here. In your neck of the woods hasn't NC DOT eliminated quite a few although I will conceed that maybe 2 separate crossings have been consolidated into one new one! However I will stipulate that there certainly are more light rail crossings now. Too many people are too stupid to deal with crossings.
We should have started 50 years ago eliminating crossings.
Absolutely
Instead we are still building more of them.
I believe that may be incorrect. Some of you posters can maybe cite more but I know that not a sigle new crossing has been built anywhere near here. In your neck of the woods hasn't NC DOT eliminated quite a few although I will conceed that maybe 2 separate crossings have been consolidated into one new one!
However I will stipulate that there certainly are more light rail crossings now.
Too many people are too stupid to deal with crossings.
The FRA has an active program to close grade crossings, check their webpage for details.
And the reason you have to hold my beer is because I have to have a free hand for the stick shift and a free hand for the beef jerky stick, and the cup holder dont work worth a darn....
23 17 46 11
Like Jeff Foxworthy said, if your last words on Earth were, "Hey everybody, watch this!" you might have been a redneck.
Reality TV is to reality, what Professional Wrestling is to Professional Brain Surgery.
edblysard The FRA has an active program to close grade crossings, check their webpage for details. And the reason you have to hold my beer is because I have to have a free hand for the stick shift and a free hand for the beef jerky stick, and the cup holder dont work worth a darn....
The driver in the linked article should lose their driving priviledges, period. The folks asking if Nevada is somehow at fault for the stupidity of an individual trucker - get over it.
Fact is that outside of the cost of lost human life, which you can't measure, if you go with straight equipment and cleanup costs the costs of the occasional grade crossing collision are FAR cheaper than the costs of massive grade separations. It comes down to money.
Furthermore, this latest Amtrak crash being an exception the vast majority of grade crossing collisions only the people in the vehicle die or get injured, the train crew are fine. I'm not going to shed tears about people who run gates.
OK so you don't give a d**n about the lives of the irresponsible drivers of vehicles, and you don't see the economic value in doing so. The various recent discussions have been about protecting the occupants of trains, particularly passengers, from those same irresponsible drivers.
I agree with you that recent discussions have been about protecting the lives of the people on the train, and yes that it s a different matter than the idiots who run crossing gates.
Look at http://www.gao.gov/products/PAD-82-21 - the GAO states that while politicians and government agencies many times to do explicitly calculate the value of a life, very frequently they do so implicitly because they have to. I'm sure the FRA somewhere has a value of life figure as well...
Note the wide disparity mentioned by the GAO between some of the mentioned govt. agencies regarding how much or how little one calculates the value of a life to be.
Now take the number of grade crossing incidents where the train occupants were injured or killed and factor in the cost to do grade separation everywhere in the country - then yes you will get a monetary value of a life.
And I bet that this number would be so high (due to the relatively low number of train occupant deaths vs the extremely high number of grade crossings) that it is just economically impractical to expect grade crossings to be eliminated and while it's a nice pipe dream and looks good politically it's not going to happen in reality.
I'm not trying to be insensitive to people's lives here but I'm merely stating that as a country we only have so much money to go around, and as such certain things just aren't worth the monetary value to get done. Again, not trying to be insensitive but those are just financial facts. As a society our government will not spend $25 million per life to make something safer (I just made that figure up as an example).
Sawtooth500, thanks for digging up and sharing that link and info.
That GAO study is old - from Nov. 1981 - but of value nonetheless, so here's the direct link to the full 9-page version (approx. 1.09 MB in size), at: http://archive.gao.gov/d47t13/116998.pdf
In particular, note that in Table 1 at the top of page 5 is the DOT's explicit "guideline" figures from back then, as follows:
And in Table 2 at the top of page 7, the implicit "Cost per Life Saved" that was used for the estimate of eliminating all railroad crossings was $100,000 [per reference in footnote (b) ].
Other than drastic increases due to inflation since then - on the order of 5 to 10 times as much - then these numbers would still seem to be valid today, IMHO. And - "YMMV !"
- Paul North.
Actually I think there is a newer study out from just last year but I couldn't find that one - either way, same concept just updated numbers.
Paul_D_North_Jr Other than drastic increases due to inflation since then - on the order of 5 to 10 times as much - then these numbers would still seem to be valid today, IMHO. And - "YMMV !" - Paul North.
Inflation of 5-10 times as much as 30 years ago? How about 2.5 to 4 times as much.
Sawtooth500 Actually I think there is a newer study out from just last year but I couldn't find that one - either way, same concept just updated numbers.
Dan
CNW 6000Yep. Beyond a certain point you're just burning money that could be put to better use...just because some folks can't be saved from themselves.
Back in the sixties there was a "big" concern about "killer trees" alongside our roads. While all of us would agree that a big oak within a few feet of the shoulder of a high speed highway probably isn't a good idea, apparently some folks took the whole thing a bit too seriously.
One result, IIRC, was an editorial in a newspaper that said, in effect, you can get rid of all the "killer trees," force the cars to be a certain distance apart, and who knows what else, and some bozo will still manage to roll his car and kill himself.
All a foolproof method for preventing something needs to defeat it is a bigger fool...
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...
schlimm Inflation of 5-10 times as much as 30 years ago? How about 2.5 to 4 times as much.
Using CPI figures, the CPI for 1983 is a base of 100; current is 225.96, so prices, in general, are 2.26 times higher than then.
A follow up. the driver was charged with aggravated DUI; his passenger died.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-dui-charge-filed-against-man-who-hit-locomotive-20110711,0,3213991.story
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.