That's what I grew up with in the St. Louis area, when it came to crossing railroad tracks. Now, with rail crossing gates, bells and flashing lights, I have grown careless along with millions of other drivers, lulled into a false complacency that the lights will flash and the gates will come down before a train reaches a crossing.
And now?
From now on I shall look, before I drive across any set of railroad tracks. Friday evening's train-car tragedy in University Park, Illinois is a wake-up call. The gates don't always come down. Dance teacher Katie Lunn, 26, didn't have a chance, when an Amtrak train struck her vehicle. Drivers in front of her and behind her say the crossing warnings did not work.
What warning in the locomotive is there, if any, to alert an engineer to a failure of the crossing gates and lights to activate? Media are reporting that maintenance crews were at the crossing earlier in the day. Did they work on the activation system?
Day or night, slow down and look both ways. Don't just "look"; see whether a train is approaching. Act as if you expect a train to be approaching. Your brain will say, "No train, no train." You must over-ride that automatic signal. Just because a train has never crossed in front of you without activating the warnings signals, it's time to change your thinking.
3 comments:
On the other hand, you can only slow down so much before you create traffic gridlock in the metro area.
On the other, other hand, this incident is alarming because my own personal experience (don't ask!) informs me that if a crossing's warning system is destroyed or disabled, you get a "false positive" and the warning signals activate and the gates automatically drop.
On the other, other, other hand, most denziens of this built-up area have never found themselves crossing an "unguarded or unautomated" crossing. Used to be quite a few in McHenry County years ago, haven't traversed any lately.
In rural Jo Daviess County, they are the norm, and I stop at them before proceeding. Locals don't. When asked why, they reply, "train ain't due for another coupla hours". I don't know that, so I stop each time.
In this case, with this lady, I would have no reason to believe I needed to stop, and would have been just as dead.
DBTR, thanks for your good comment. And I'd have been dead right alongside you.
Kind of hard to believe that the gates weren't working (if they weren't). Did they work all day (if the maintenance crew worked on them) and then suddenly stop working Friday night?
This mornings news stated that a worker had disarmed the gate. Did not say why or how long it had been that way. It was called "human error". I call it a whopping lawsuit! At least it would be if I was that young womans family.
Post a Comment