Does anyone notice that when accounts of train-vehicle collisions are reported on the TV/radio and in newspapers, they invariably use phrases like "The train was speeding at 79 mph!", as if that had something to do with it.
Posted by Eric (Member # 674) on :
Yeah... really. Whether the train is going 40MPH or 140MPH, you and/or your vehicle is not going to come out without a scratch.
Posted by cajon (Member # 40) on :
And to think alot of reporters went to college to learn to talk so stupidly!
Posted by vline (Member # 1132) on :
Well it's like this, upon approaching a railway crossing, slow or at least look & see if train is coming. If not, then proceed, if train is coming. STOP! Pretty simple really, hey? The trauma some of these car drivers create for train drivers is shocking.
Posted by Eric (Member # 674) on :
Even at crossings with bells, lights and gates, people STILL get hit!!! And the blare of a locomotive's horn combined with that... gee whiz! I understand that some states now have programs which help engineers get through the trauma of an experience like hitting a car. I still can't imagine speeding towards a crossing and seeing that driver that sees you and races you, or just doesn't see (or hear) you at all.
Posted by PullmanCo (Member # 1138) on :
It's called the car/truck drivers act moronic.
There's one grade crossing on the old route of the Pioneer Zephyr. Regularly, folks with more guts than brains skirt around falling or down crossing arms, playing chicken with 135 car coal drags doing 50, or worse, hotshot container/auto rack loads doing 65. So far, they've been fortunate. I just don't want to be around the day there's a cruch.
John
Posted by Geoff Mayo (Member # 153) on :
Reporting is bad here in the UK too. A train that, say, slides past a red signal by 10 yards without any incident will get more TV coverage than a motorway pile-up with deaths.
We have also had a large proportion of "reporting" such idiotic statements as "the train driver was not able to STEER out of the way" (perfectly true, and I've seen it twice for different incidents).
Grrr!
Geoff M.
Posted by MPALMER (Member # 125) on :
I have seen news articles with poorly worded headlines (example: Train Kills Family of Five). I wrote a 'letter of correction' to the editor...