Just would like to know how long the train has to sit there if it strikes a person/vehicle at a grade crossing and doesn't derail?
Any vehicle or train involved in an accident is required to stay in place until police release it..half hour or half day or whole day or whatever. They have to be sure they've interviewed everyone involved, gotten all the information and correctly, too, know all they think they can know before allowing people and vehicles and trains to leave the scene.
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Two to four hours seems to be the range in southern California.
- Erik
It depends on the complexity of the investigation.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Is that delay to investigatea hardship for you?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
For people commuting to work, the delay can most definitely be a hardship.
So just shove the car to one side, scape the remains off the lead car or engine and giddyup?
Schlimm:
I am retired NP-BN-BNSF clerk from Minneapolis. Your comment is rude. Having worked with the Claims and Operating Departments, I know that crossing accidents can be very time consuming. The local police and railroad employees must thoroughly investigate each incident. The train and track must be inspected for derailed cars and possible track damage. If the accident is of a fatal nature, the conductor and engineer must have a urine test and they may ask for another crew to take the train to its destination. Also, signal data from their field must be accessed to see if the signals are working properly. If a passenger train is involved, then the conductor or other employee MUST obtain the names and addresses of all passengers on the train and determine if they are injured or not.
We had a four fatal accident at a crossing in Anoka, MN several years ago. The incident tied up the main line between Northtown Yard and Fargo most of the night.
The best feature of new locomotives and cab cars is a forwarding facing camera to document what is going on. I saw the video of a double accident in northern Minnesota several years. The car failed to stop at an unsignaled crossing.
Ed Burns of Anoka, MN
My "rude" comment was sarcasm directed at the commuters forn whom being delayed seems more important than investigation of a fatal accident. I have worked with engineers and emergency personnel involved with crossing accidents. It is sad and just too bad if the consequence is delay.
schlimm It is sad and just too bad if the consequence is delay.
It is sad and just too bad if the consequence is delay.
For most people a two hour delay is nothing more than an annoyance, but for a few it can be a true hardship (e.g on the way to a job interview). On the LOSSAN corridor, fatalities involving trespassers are a common enough occurrence that it discourages some people from taking the train.
The worst thing that has happened to accident investigation, from a railroad perspective, is the popularity of the CSI television franchise - everyone on the scene believes they are the next 'Gil Grissom' and will discover a murder in the incident.
For a non-fatal incident with significant vehicle damage you can look for a minimum of 2 hours delay and more likely 3. If fatalities are involved, in addition to the first responders, the coroner has to be summoned to pronounce the bodies dead and the body removal personnel summoned (in many cases the coroner does not remove the bodies). With fatalities 4 to 6 hours has become the norm. I have been involved with incidents that took 10 hours to open up to rail traffic.
Rail personnel when dispatched to the scene will do everything possible to get rail traffic moving, however, they do not control the situation. When local authorities say rail traffic can resume - it will resume, and not before.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
If a passenger train was involved, could the people be bussed from the train if they know they're going to be waiting there for 2-6 hours?
ejjski If a passenger train was involved, could the people be bussed from the train if they know they're going to be waiting there for 2-6 hours?
It would probably take 4 - 6 hours just to arrange for the busses, let alone getting them to the location where the incident has happened and then transfering passengers in a area that is not equipped for passengers on the ground.
I don't think Schlimm's comments were rude so much as crude. Plus, if one is a commuter he's got to get to work or home. And if he was sitting in the last seat in the last car or anyplace other than at the point of impact for that matter, what could he contribute to the investigation even if held in place for 24 hours. Yes, facts and accuracy are important, but holding trains and non involved train riders for hours on end seems like wasting the time of too many not directly involved....a train travels a track with grade crossings everyday, one day somebody drives onto the track in front of the train; the driver of the car ad the driver of the train are the two people who are the only two involved who witnessed the whole thing. along with those who may have been not aboard the train but watching the train and grade crossing; so why should those aboard the train be waylayed for so long?
One thing's for certain: no one, and I mean NO ONE, would put up with traffic on a major highway being totally stopped for two, four, six, eight hours or more for an accident investigation. At the least there'd be some angry letters to the editor of the local paper, at worst a full-blown riot.
I realize it's an "apples and oranges" situation, but in an open and shut case of trespassing or grade-crossing foolishness there shouldn't be any reason for a super-long delay.
Or maybe getting a rail line open and running again just doesn't have the same urgency as getting a highway open.
Firelock76One thing's for certain: no one, and I mean NO ONE, would put up with traffic on a major highway being totally stopped for two, four, six, eight hours or more for an accident investigation.
Wayne,
I hate to disagree but that exact thing happened to me in Edison, New Jersey driving south on Route 1. There was a truck collision. I was shunted off to a side road and soon had to stop because it was a parking lot, both in front and in back of me. I sat there for over 4 hours along with a lot of other drivers.
Trains are not the only things that have accidents. When they happen it just takes the time it takes.
John
Hi John!
Shunted off to a side road and essentially forgotten? You and who knows how many others? That sounds to me like an absolutely lousy example of traffic detouring and routing. OK, Route 1 in Edison isn't exactly Route 95, but the local "Johnny Laws" should have been more on the ball than that!
Or maybe Jersey cops aren't what they used to be. Who knows? None of the cops I used to know would have pulled something like that.
Wayne
Firelock76Shunted off to a side road and essentially forgotten? You and who knows how many others? That sounds to me like an absolutely lousy example of traffic detouring and routing. OK, Route 1 in Edison isn't exactly Route 95, but the local "Johnny Laws" should have been more on the ball than that!
You are right that US Route 1 in Edison is not I 95. It is not limited access but it is 3 lanes in each direction and it is pretty busy. This happen after I got off the Parkway and before the Raritan River Bridge. I would have appreciated it if the police could have gotten us moving faster or redirected us to another north--south road but they didn't. We just sat there. A kind person lent me her cell phone so I could call my wife and tell her I was stuck but OK.
Thousands of people and/or millions of dollars in freight billings delayed for hours because some doofus drives onto a railroad track? I think not. Hold onto the engineer for all the pro forma questions, if you must, but otherwise -- in the absence of damage to the train or track -- get a new engineer to the scene as quickly as possible and let him proceed with the train.
It's flat stupid to treat this like an accident at a street intersection in which the facts often require extensive interviews and measurements to establish.
Firelock76 Hi John! Shunted off to a side road and essentially forgotten? You and who knows how many others? That sounds to me like an absolutely lousy example of traffic detouring and routing. OK, Route 1 in Edison isn't exactly Route 95, but the local "Johnny Laws" should have been more on the ball than that! Or maybe Jersey cops aren't what they used to be. Who knows? None of the cops I used to know would have pulled something like that. Wayne
Was traveling I-95 Jacksonville to Savannah - a 2 hour trip.
Accident on the NB lanes North of mile 26 - Authorities detoured traffic on surface roads around the affected area, returning to I-95 about mile 38.
Length of trip - 6 hours.
Accident on SB I-95 in North Carolina - detoured on surface roads and other interstates - additional mileage 70 miles and additional time 3 hours.
It does happen on highways!
It is all a matter of law. Here in Georgia if a motor vehicle is involved then if the route is an interstate, US road. or state route the state patrol investigates unless they let a local jurisdiction to investigate. ( does not happen much ). Then if on a county road the county investigates. On town and city roads the city investigates unless it is a state route see above. Some counties the medical examiner or corner ( elected position with no medical background needed ) will be called with no movement until same examines scene.
To further complicate now with all the litigation going on persons at accident scene can request pictures, diagrams, etc be done before any clearing of scene. Every state probably has different rules.
To further complicate here in Georgia the sovereign immunity law is very strong there by investigators try very hard to take that in consideration mainly that the government did not do anything deliberate..
. auntiluin car
My experience with fatalities on the major interstates in California that only the affected lanes are closed off and that the investigations are usually wrapped up in a couple of hours. One reason for the rapid clearing of the scene is that the traffic jams created by the investigations usually lead to more wrecks. Caltrans and the CHP usually make an effort to re-route traffic if a wreck clean-up is going to take a while.
My impression is that a good fraction of the fatalities occurring on the LOSSAN corridor are due to people trespassing on the ROW or people committing suicide.
Traveled from Maryland to NE Florida Friday night to Saturday morning - got to the St. Marys River Bridge (FL/GA State Line) and came to a stop - 14.4 miles and 3 hours later got past a wreck that had occurred 7 hours earlier and put 40 tons of lettuce on the road! There was no detour set up.
Went from NE Florida to South Florida - South of St. Augustine there was a 2 truck accident with a fatality and gas tanker on fire - occurred 4:30 AM Christmas Eve and roadway wasn't reopened until about 8 PM - after a segment of the roadway that had been severely burned had been repaved. NB traffic was being detoured on other surface roads.
Several years ago, I was riding home from work on Metra's Southwest Service when the train clobbered the back end of a semi-trailer in the grade crossing at Cicero Avenue in Oak Lawn. The truck was caught in traffic stopped at a red light about a block north of the grade crossing. No injuries in this accident so we were able to proceed in about 45 minutes.
ACYBaltACD: Not trying to rub it in, but you went South Friday, Dec. 20 by car & I went South on then Auto Train the same evening. You got stuck in highway traffic. We got in about an hour early (don't remember the exact timing on that one). We were scheduled for a 9:30 arrival, but got into Sanford around 8:00 & began detraining before 8:30. Not sure what that means. Of course, if some knucklehead had pulled out in front of our train, we might have had the same delay as you had. Length of time for this kind of thing: USUALLY no more than 4 or 5 hours at the worst. Sometimes only about an hour or so. Longest delays occur when there are fatalities or if the loco is damaged. Amtrak doesn't have strategically-placed extra crews and locos available on short notice. Tom
And I was in part responsible for your trip from Lorton to Richmond.
BT/DT, (been there,....)
Two to (not whistle sounds) relate: a passenger train, late because of a fatality vehicle collision. was waiting to be pulled through the West Oakland car washer;as hostler I was caretaker of the inbound, call it, killing power.
Walking around (to engine crews), that's a technical term, I saw some tissue which I confidently can say was from a brain, on the engine's frame.
Another: a good Saturday, 6 hours on duty for 8 hours pay, and an hour away, a suicide.....jumped-up, saw his face and the child he was holding....few feet from the cab end of our pair of SW1500', heading for home at 50 mph.
What's most ghastly, morbid, horrible?
We were released when the responder's could not find a casualty's arm.
They recognized the futility
I read several stories today about auto accidents closing major highways from two to 6 hours. No body complained to the conductor.
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