Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: TechMan on January 31, 2018, 01:01:57 PM
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A train carrying members of Congress to a Republican retreat in West Virginia slammed into a dump truck on Wednesday, throwing lawmakers from their seats and leaving at least one person dead, officials said.
They hit a dump truck that was apparently stuck on the tracks.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/31/train-carrying-lawmakers-to-gop-retreat-involved-in-accident.html (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/31/train-carrying-lawmakers-to-gop-retreat-involved-in-accident.html)
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I used to live just a couple of miles east of that RR crossing and crossed that track daily, so my ears perked up this morning when Fox mentioned "Crozette" (sic). Glad it wasn't worse.
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The train hit a garbage truck and killed one of the three people in the truck.
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It was all over the noon news.
Even my normally very reasonable boss is pulling out the tin foil on this one.
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Trains hitting vehicles on the track happens pretty often. It seems people get stupid in that situation. One of the main problems is that often the tracks are raised above the street level enough that some vehicles can get high centered.
I'm not clear on how thoroughly the intersection was regulated (signs, flashing lights, barricades, whatever), but another reason is a long vehicle getting stopped by the barricade on the other side of the tracks after trying to make it through.
If you video-search for train car collisions, there are bunches of them in real time from surveillance cams and phone cams.
Small sample --high centering, volume warning:
https://youtu.be/86o6p0Bton4
Terry
REF:
https://www.minnesotasafetycouncil.org/OL/stop.cfm
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[tinfoil]
There is no such thing as a coincidence
[tinfoil]
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I was at work six miles west, of course I know less than you guys, just limited radio reports. I wonder if it was the super moon, traffic was a real goat rodeo all over, I had to divert on the way home to BFE for another one bad enough to close the whole road.
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Trains hitting vehicles on the track happens pretty often. It seems people get stupid in that situation. One of the main problems is that often the tracks are raised above the street level enough that some vehicles can get high centered.
But if a dump truck can get high-centered on it, you have a problem.
The stretch limo only got that way because of it's extraordinarily long wheelbase combined with still being built low.
I'm not clear on how thoroughly the intersection was regulated (signs, flashing lights, barricades, whatever), but another reason is a long vehicle getting stopped by the barricade on the other side of the tracks after trying to make it through.
Barricades are typically only long enough to block oncoming traffic. I would consider it a defect if it blocked people from getting off.
Now, people trying to beat the train by going into the oncoming lane after the barricades have dropped, only to need to switch back to avoid that barricade, that is a problem, but not one easily fixed.
A garbage truck shouldn't be trying to beat the train.
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Don't know exactly what that one looks like, but it's out in a rural part of the county. Pretty basic stuff, I would imagine.
Add in the fact that one would think the trash truck drivers would also be familiar with their territory, so getting stuck on something he goes over on a regular basis would be weird... Unless he wasn't familiar with it? But in that case, why would he be out there?
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I said, "One of the main problems is that often the tracks are raised above the street level enough that some vehicles can get high centered." The limo was an extreme example, but lots of vehicles can get high centered.
https://youtu.be/bgMj87A9WcY
And I didn't say that's what happened to the dump truck anyway. That one's TBD.
If you look at enough of these videos, there are several where they have barricades for both sides of the road, on both sides of the tracks, especially for multi-track crossings, apparently to prevent people from driving around them or creeping over the supposedly vacant track and getting clobbered anyhow from another train.
See 3:25 ff for a double-barricade accident. There are some other accidents on this vid including a repeat of the limo one.
https://youtu.be/xD-JNilJyfA
Another thing that happens often is that traffic on the other side of the tracks has stopped and a truck or bus driver doesn't realize that the rear of his vehicle has not actually cleared the tracks.
I've watched a large amount of these videos just 'cause, and I've seen every kind of dumbness and weird combinations of events to cause these accidents.
Right now the search engines are full of the recent accident, so it's hard to pull other stuff up, but here's an example.
https://youtu.be/V9_wdLW4ST8
Impact at 0:52.
Stop. Look. Listen. That catchphrase has been around since before I was born. People still don't.
And all the engineer can do is hit the brakes and blow the horn.
Terry
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The train hit a garbage truck and killed one of the three people in the truck.
Geez, even Keynesians settle for breaking windows.
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At least one news report I read on the incident said that several of the congresscritters immediately began administering first aid to the injured. The unworthy side of my dinosaur brain wondered if the same would have happened if it was a train full of Democrat congresscritters.
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Even my normally very reasonable boss is pulling out the tin foil on this one.
Sanitation workers' union launches least successful suicide attack ever against Republicans?
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MSNBC headline this morning...
Racist Republican Gathering Murders Dreamer with Train
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Actually, the author Stephen King said that the crash was Karma for Republicans. You have to be an actual ahole to make a comment like that when some poor guy was killed in an accident. Yup, Stephen King is one of the group of inclusive people.
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Holy crap, someone posted in King's Twitter Feed...
"Was it Karma when that van hit you?"
Another one...
"My friend Gander defines irony as a liberal--not paying attention to what's going on in the world--is struck by a van while wandering around."
3rd degree burn.
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Heard a report that someone living near the crossing reported that the signals/crossarms hadn't been working for over a week.