Dr. does NOT expect her to make it!

Most school systems in Central Indiana have drivers training only in summer school. Both of my daughters took it in summer school. My oldest got the waver and did not have to take the driving test to get her license. The youngest did not get the waver and had to take the test. My wife was upset but after I rode with my daughter I could see why she did not get the waver. I ried to teach her but 16 yr olds have a mine of their own and boy does this girl. LO LOL. Neither of my girls have had any accidents thank goodness and both are good drivers now. 9 yrs and 11 yrs experience does help and neither one will take any chances in fact they take fewer chances than the Dad does.

 

My Father-in-Law's best friend lost his college age son when the kid took a shortcut across the tracks up in CT. and the kid was killed by a train.

Also, I know of another young man who was walking down tracks out in Ohio and sat down on them to rest after he realized he was too intoxicated to go on, and he was hit in the head by the plow on the engine and somehow lived.
He will never be the same anyway.

I don't know how engineers can cope with this sort of stuff.

 

Many school districts have dropped driver ed. completely as a cost cutting measure or made it a summer school only class with limited enrollment. As long as money is more important than our kids, there will be many more memorials for teen age accident victims in high schools across the country. Not only will the crashes continue on the railroad, but on every road. I'll always wonder if the ones I've hit had any training at all and if they would have taken that extra second to look again if they had. Trust me, there's not much I can think of worse than seeing someone go out of sight under the nose and knowing you got them.

 

Watash,
I clearly remember Dad telling me the thing that stuck in his mind after 40 years of railroading (Santa Fe, freight and passenger between Newton and Dodge City) was seeing a baby bootie lying on the ground next to a car after an accident. He saw lots of bad ones, but he wouldn't speak specifically about them. He also said he knew the biggest, strongest men who'd crack up every time they'd pass by the location of an old accident.

Folks don't think about how much it affects the railroaders, or how their carelessness can cause many sleepless nights not only for their loved ones.

Kiminoz

 

You are right Kim, I saw my first one just out of Newton when I was a little boy, maybe 7 or 8. My grandma and I were going back home to Wichita. Our train slowed down really slow as we passed the other train. They had backed part of that train away, and we could see all the blood hair and eyeballs smeared over the rails. My grandma and all the other ladies were up chucking all over our car! I had gone up to the vestibule and was standing with the conductor looking out from the steps when we passed by. When he and I went back into the car, it was a mess and pandemonium! We went into another car, and finally into the parlor car. No problem back there. That is where I stayed.

I never did find out it it was a man or a woman.

 

We had another one commit suicide by train just the other day. That was down on the Norfolk Southern Chattanooga-Atlanta line around Dalton, GA. Around here, that happens three or four times a year. A friend who works on the Norfolk Southern's CNO&TP line ran over a kid back a few years ago. They were coming down just above Chattanooga at track speed (40 MPH) with a 200 car unit coal train. The kid popped up 40 feet in front of them, leaving them no time to react. They found what was left of him under the 21st hopper. More unusual was the vagrant that one of the CSXT employees found crushed under a shifted load in a gondola back a few years ago. I talked to one of the local police officers who had to take that call and while he didn't go into detail about it, he said it about made him sick.

We haven't had any real problem with school traffic that I am aware of on any of the lines in our area. This is due in no small part to the fact that Norfolk Southern identifies crossings with heavy school traffic (crossings near schools or residential areas with school aged children) and places restrictions on those crossings during the times that children are going to or from school. Trains are not to block those crossings for more than five minutes total and must be cut for the crossing immediately if it is known that the train will be stopped longer than five minutes. Also, employees are required to report observed changes in traffic patterns at those crossings. Similiar restrictions are placed on crossings near industrial plants during hours of shift changes.

As for Drivers Ed, none of the school districts in southeastern Tennessee offer it at all. As for the rest of the state, those that still offer it will not be after this school year when the clowns in the state legislature bankrupt the state. Sadly, it seems that most politicians consider it more cost effective to bury teenage drivers than to properly train them to drive safely.

 

I really don't feel the general public is mangeling themselves more today than they used to, it is just that our medial tells us about them more often to gain hype for greater circulation, which means greater profits for them.

Several guys have sent me photos of some of the remains left after an encounter with 10,000 tons easing across their body. So far only three show there is enough left to determine if it was a girl or boy, most of them you can't tell that, or how old they used to be. One he told me, they do not know where the rest of him is, or how long his head and arm had been hanging there.

Well, breakfast is ready now, so gotta go eat. I'll tell you more later. Some are really gory, but all are dead!

Have a good day!

 

Here is a strange one... It isn't always the driver's fault!

It seems that a girl dumped her abusive boyfriend.

He didn't want to give her up, but she would not go back to him.

After several attempts, she finally told him she was going to find another man.

A couple of weeks later she had stopped at a railroad crossing.

As the train was going by, witnesses testified that a man in a fullsized car had actually pushed her car into the moving train while she had all four of her wheels lockedup!

The train crew finally saw her car being dragged along and stopped the train.

She was trapped in the wreckage, still alive, but had to be cut out of her mangled car.

It seems there was an iron bridge about a mile ahead that would surely have folded the car back under the box car, or cut it in two.

The young man has been charged with intent to murder!

The young girl is expected to live, and may make a recovery.

Her only recourse in that situation would have been to try to jump out and run, or turn the car wheels to go with the train direction hoping to go beside the train and into the ditch.

 

Their sure are some real sicko's out their I tell ya! Its hard to believe a man, could do such a thing and degrade himself so low that he has no respect. In a situation as such with the relationship deal, I'da been on my way and recover from the broken heart no matter how bad it hurt and went on with life... Not go out and try to kill the girl for it, but then thats the type of guy, that makes us decent ones and respectable ones have to prove our respect and dignaty all the time. It sure is sad!

And for the fact of doing it all involving a train... I have strong feelings towards the crew for living through it. But the I hope the girl survives, and the guy goes for atempted murder! He deserves it!

 

Reading all this brings me to a number of emotions, rage that some one would try and beat the train, sadness over the death, and sympathy to the crew. I remember railfaning with my wife on the I&M Rail Link in Davis Jt. IL. The crew that day was kind enough to let us ride in the cab of their SD10 that had recently been shoped. At first Tina and I did not say much so as not to bother them. After a little bit the engineer and I started to talk. I stood behind him as we spoke, and could see what he was seeing. As we came to a crossing with lights, I saw an older white Oldsmobile pulling up to the crossing. I can only describe what I felt as a cold flush feeling flow through me, and all conversation stopped. I could feel myself tense up, and I remember seeing the engineer tense up as well. It probably took only a few seconds to pass the crossing, but it seemed longer. I remember makking eye contact with the guy in the car. Lucky for us on that run, on that day, at that crossing was a wise man at the wheel of his car. The driver waited for us to pass, and the engineer continued to pick up his conversation where he had left off. I would hate to go through that everytime I had to go through a grade crossing.

 

I know that feeling all too well. On our trains operating through town, its no fun working as the flagman. When you're not providing flag protection at a crossing, attempting to keep from being run over you're riding along the railroad with both eyes peeled and one hand literally on the emergency air brake handle.

 

Some things never change. Yesterday I got my New York Central Historical Society "Headlight," a great publication. Here is a quote from the company magazine published in 1919:

".............but the whole responsibility for railroad accidents does not lie on the shoulders of railroad men. The public is to blame for thousands of casualties which no person employed on the railroads can prevent. Of the thousands of men and women killed on rights of way every year in this country a great majority are willful trespassers, and many of these are not tramps, as is generally supposed, but respectable citizens who imperil their lives taking cuts over railroad property. It is not the railroad that sends fool motorists on grade crossings in front of trains. It is not the fault of the railroads that, disregarding warnings, many passengers jump off trains in motion, or, ducking under crossing gates, board moving trains. It is an everyday occurrence in cars on steam and electric roads, in New York and other parts of the country, to have passengers claw at the doors to open them before it is safe to do so."

And it goes on. This was obviously before "Political Correctness" existed. Good stuff, eh?

[ 11 July 2002, 22:35: Message edited by: fitz ]

 

Needs repeating

This thread should be resurrected and used as a reminder each year as we approach the end of school and more kids will be out on the streets more hours and with much more freedom. The lesson applies to adult males as well.

 

Some things never change. Four cars jumped the gates in front of me tonight, 6 kids threw rocks at us, 6 more were walking in the gauge with their backs to us and 2 girls almost got killed when they walked out of the brush by the track and found my train right there. Just another day.

 

What about the farmer who got hit by a UP northbound. The farmer, who i believe was a highschool kid working in the soybean fields in the summer,came out of the field on a cabbed tractor with the ac on high and a set of headphones on. He never made it across the tracks. I kid you not, it knocked that farm tractor back into the field! I could'nt believe the distanse it traveled. The rear wheel was ripped off and it stuck to the drawbar on the loco. Rescue workers said his dvd player was found some 200 feet behind the tractor still playing a song. A bad ordeal. The last time I took a train to Van Buren we approached a crossing where three kids were on bicycles at the crossing. As we got to the crossing they came across the tracks right in front of us. They were so close i could see the smile on the kids face as they crossed! I guess there was something funny about it to them? What would have happend if the chain had come off? What would have happend if their foot slipped off the peddle? What would have happend if one of them had lost their balance a fell over? I guess a pine box for a ten year old boy, and probley counseling for the engineer and me.

 

Watash -

Thanks for starting such an eye opening thread. I will be forwarding it to family members shortly.

Ben

 

I too have seen people go around crossing gates. And I always wonder if they only knew the risk they put themselves into everytime they did it. They always gamble and sooner or later they will lose.

I too drove a truck for several years and luckily I havent been involved in any incidents, but have seen my fair share of them. Some in major cities and others out in the wide open spaces.

I worked for Sperry Rail Service for a bit and have seen my share of idiots that crossed in front of us, either after we had set on and tested for a while or had just set on, on a busy road in Houston.

I'm not sure what the school system here does for drivers ed, but we have a driver ed school, maybe I'll print this and go in and talk to them to find out if they offer grade crossing safety etc.

you will also be surprised at the number of truck drivers that try to beat a train just because theyre in a big hurry and are just a bit late for their appointment. Its always easy to be late than not get there at all. The same goes in the winter where theres snow and ice on the Interstates and highways.

Tom

 

Yep last night on my way to work I saw an idiot that just didnt know how close he/she/they came to dying by train.

I passed a north bound UP freight in Calera,Ok gates went down he/she/they went around the gates and the train was moving along at a good clip, missed them by about 6 seconds.

and i would have been a witness and if they were hit the first thing I'd ask a survivor is "how stupid do you feel now?'" followed by "not in a big hurry anymore are you?"

Tom