But was caused by...yes once again, by a truck stuck on the railroad crossing! It is incredible as a truck driver is supposed to be a professional one, are not aware of this issue!
This isn't Brightline's 1st accident, they have had alot of issues with dumb drivers in the past getting stuck or trying to run the crossings. They've also struck multiple pedestrians that are most likely trespassing on the tracks. Brightline has had nothing but back luck with the idiots that drive.
The number of level crossings at grade surely can't help either. It seems like there's a crossing every km or something. Also for some reasons in the US it seems much more common practice to try and outrun the train, I wonder if the longer trains (and longer wait times at crossing) can have a psychological impact on making stupid decisions.
It seems almost once I week I see some clown with a death wish trying to outrun the Auto Train or a CSX intermodal. Those are heavy freights (more or less) going 70 MPH. The gate-runners like to wait until the train is less than 5 seconds from the crossing. One time while train-watching, I had to run away from the track because it was such a close call and I was worried I'd be struck. Normally, this is my position too, but far too many times innocent bystanders die when the offender's flying truck or the derailing train hits them.
Don’t forget about the train drivers while we’re at it. Generally speaking, it seems that only few take the consequences of these crashes for the drivers into consideration. I watched a documentary about a German train driver who struck and killed a pedestrian. His whole life was turned upside down and the psychological trauma was absolutely devastating.
People will never learn no matter how many times a message on the speaker says to not cross the tracks but used the overpass or underpass. I still remember that day I was on the platform and I saw a guy crossing the tracks and he was hit by an express train at 140 kph, I had to secure the perimeter and I saw him being hit but also his corpse I still suffer from PTSD till this day. I feel like warning people can be useless sometimes…
Another point, the train doesn't always win, sometimes both train and car/truck lose. A few years ago there was a tragic incident here in Italy where a train with a cab car in the lead hit a truck, and the first few carriages as well as the cab car where thrown off the tracks. Attached a photo of the aftermath of the incident, won't put it in the preview in case there are people that don't like seeing this sort of stuff. For reference this is how the cab car looks when it's not crumpled and upside down
An Amtrak train derailed on Monday when it hit a dump truck on the tracks in Missouri and it killed the driver, 3 passengers and injured 150 people. This stuff is serious and it happens too frequently in the US because of at grade crossings (and often dumb people / drivers).
Thanks for your videos. Of course hopes this not happens anymore!. But the one I showed it was with a truck, with caused more damages than cars. In this case it is incredible the truck driver must known about this type of railroad crossing which have more "altitude" than the normal roads, so the trailer can hit the trucks and can not move anymore!
Random thought: If trucking companies were given massive fines (I'm thinking 6+ figures) when their drivers violate railroad crossing laws, would that encourage more drivers to obey the gates/lights? You can't sue a dead man, but would the threat of a massive financial hit to the company encourage a culture of "zero tolerance" towards grade crossing violations?
Agree with you. But please notice in this case - as on several other ones - it was not caused by the track drive not to obey the gates and lights. He tried to cross the tracks before the lights and gates. But the problem was he got stuck at the rail crossing. Then the trains arrives.
Funny how the news piece repeatedly called them "Brightline crashes" when in every single incident they could have said "This person is a flaming imbecile" or "The mother of the car who crossed the tracks at a place with no crossing endangering her 3 month old child attended court today to have said child removed because she's obviously incapable" Sometimes american media astounds me...
Not really. If someone in the UK parked their car on a railway track they wouldn't blame the trains for hitting the car...
Yeh but the train did hit the truck in this case. It wasn't the train operators fault but the train did hit the truck. Would you rather have them say "Truck gets hit by train"?
No... I'd rather them say "Truck driver gets fired and truck company pays large fine due to insufficient training of their drivers who tried to cross a level crossing and got beached, endangering the train driver who is now in therapy"
That's not really the point... If idiot drivers do idiotic stuff then the media make it about the rail line people are going to continue to do idiot stuff and get away with it Make it about the idiots and show there's a human component to the railways and it might change people's minds about how they make their choices when driving. For instance, if you drive like a LOVE with a kid in the car, you MIGHT lose your kid...
Well in this case you had a truck try to cross a crossing but unfortunately the truck gets stuck and then the gates go down. The train operator doesn't have enough time to stop and hits the truck. It's not the truck driver's fault nor the train operators fault. It was simply an accident. The truck driver probably crossed many crossings before and never had an issue. Is he an idiot for trying to cross a crossing thinking there would be no problem?
Sorry but I do not agree. It is the truck driver fault! This is due to - as I have mentioned - if you are carrying a low and long trailer, and the railroad crossing it has some "hump" due to the rails height comparing to the street, you can not go through it! Unfortunately there are lot of collisions of this kind for the driver recklessness. The word "accident" implies something happens due to is unavoidable. This is not the case!
True but did the driver know that it would happen? Did the driver think that if he went through the crossing that there wouldn't be an issue? Perhaps the GPS took him through the route which led him to that crossing but the driver had no time to turn it around once he realized. Maybe the driver went through similar crossings with no problem. It's easy to call it reckless driving and intentional but frankly it just seems like an unfortunate accident so I disagree with you
This is inaccurate. It's been well reported that the crossing had neither lights nor gates. It has also not yet been established whether the truck was even stopped on the tracks, let alone stuck, or was crossing. The NTSB preliminary report, released yesterday and linked below, does say that the truck's engine control module was recovered, so that may offer info when it's analyzed. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/RRD22MR010.aspx
Any professional truck driver should know the height, width and length of the vehicle as well as the "beaching" parameters, ie how high a hump they can drive over. If the truck driver in question didn't know that the level / grade crossing would cause them to get stuck then they're incompetent. In the UK we have a specific road sign for risk of grounding for just these sorts of events, but truck drivers should know in advance if they're likely to do something which could wind up with them being stuck, and if they DO get stuck, ramifications...
Sorry but the U.S and the U.K are not the same. Shocking I know. It's easy to call someone incompetent when not knowing all the facts that led up to the situation so again I disagree that it was intentional or incompetent
No, please do not get me wrong! I am not saying it was intentional. The fact is, if you are a professional driver transporting goods, you might check the route you will go through. "You" if you are alone, or the truck company you work for. Other examples you see pictures of trucks with loads hitting over road passes, due to not enough clearance. This is not a minor issue: Lot of bad consequences: - Persons with injuries ( insideand outside the train) - Dameages for the crossing, and the train, and other vehicles arround. - Money losses for the owner of the truck, the train, but also for the vehicles above the truck Futhermore there are lot of videos of collisions this kind. So after so many incidents of this kinds, some measures must be taken. So prevention is always the best!
Just checked the vid... 00:43 shows the trailer of the truck clearly beached on the humped level crossing Doesn't matter whether it's US or UK. If someone doesn't know how to properly operate a vehicle with that much weight on the back then they're incompetent... Hopefully they've been hit with whatever legal hammer they can be
Not even just that. If you are driving a vehicle and you come up to an obstacle it's your JOB to risk assess moving over that obstacle. It could be that this driver got lost and wanted to get back to the main road, or had never been down here and their GPS had told them to cross the railroad. Either way the only thing that counts here is that the driver should have known their vehicle and known it wouldn't be able to cross at that point I mean one thing I would say it that it a very very badly designed crossing as well so whoever put that in needs some words as well...
I agree with most of your comment. May be the US Government Transportation division, must do a survey about railroad crossing which are not suitable for that kind of trailers! Please notice the problem of them is only for that kind ones. Other shorter trucks and trailers and other vehicles types does not have issues there. What is clear, this is happening in the USA for so long, so some urgent measures must be taken. Of course other kind of vehicles crossing when a train is coming - due to the impatient vehicle driver no wait the train to pass - are inevitable. But this kind of situation, where the truck got stuck when no train is coming yet, the crash should be avoidable!
Agreed. As I said, in the UK we have a specific road sign for this Absolutely. Only for low slung articulated trailers. Car transporters are notorious for it!
They haven't been charged since it was deemed an accident.... I guess the British don't understand that accidents happen
True but again a driver isnt gonna know every nook and cranny of a road. The driver may have gone through similar crossings with no issue so again it was just an unfortunate accident
Oh we do. An accident is an unforeseen event or one which could not have been mitigated by the skill or knowledge of an operator. Such things include failure of materials and things like that A truck being driven onto a road which said road is not designed for and where said truck is likely to cause an issue isn't an accident, that's either incompetence or lack of attention on behalf of the driver or incompetence and lack of training on behalf of the company The same is true of train drivers who SPAD or that one the other month who forgot they were crossing to the slow lines and took a 25mph switch at 80mph... So maybe your definition of "accident" is just different... Personally I wouldn't defend someone who by their fault could have killed people when it was utterly avoidable just by paying attention to where you're going with thousands of dollars of truck, thousands of dollars of cars weighing thousands of pounds which could easily have deflected the train onto the main road killing a few dozen or maybe a hundred people?
For that matter, and for all we know, this could have been that driver's regular route, and he'd never had a problem before. Many questions to be answered.
Ah yes it's always easy to blame one party and say they should be punished for something that was clearly and deemed an accident. But hey the U.S and U.K are two different countries so the standards of accidents must be different then judging by your point of view
I assume he is a professional, as part of his training I assume he would have to know the limits of what his vehicle can do, and where it can and can't go. The same way it would be his fault if he tried to go through an underpass that's too low, it's his fault for trying to go through a crossing not built for this kind of vehicles.
Again he may have gone through similar crossings with no issue. Who knows the circumstances that led him to cross the gate. Anyways it was deemed an accident. Some people wont think it was an accident and I would disagree and that would be that really. I rest my case.
Don't get me wrong. I think just culture is superior, I'm not saying he's a terrible person and should go to jail. The fact of the matter is, you either have a set of regulations prescribing exactly what crossing you can and can't go through given your weight, trailer length, ground clearance, etc... so in this case you can say, it's entirely his fault for not following the regulations, OR you assume that the truck drivers can make a judgement call to decide wether or not their truck is able to cross, and in this case he failed to do his job properly. Due to how the system is designed, the blame seems mostly with the truck driver, with the other big part being the lack of regulations and guidelines on the matter, possibly followed by inadequate training. It's not an unfortunate accident, it's wasn't caused by bad luck, and the astonishingly high amount of similar accidents demonstrates this clearly. If the evidence shows that truck drivers can't make this kind of judgement calls and get stuck in RR crossing regularly, then it's the FRA and FMCSA' fault for not putting in place any advice or regulation on the matter. Saying things are "unfortunate accidents" serves no one, as that doesn't help to improve safety going forward. There are always reasons to accidents and those have to be identified and dealt with.
Even if they grade separate all their crossings, somehow Florida Man will find a way to get a car on the tracks.
On a side note, wonder if it would be worth added cameras to railroad crossing like at some traffic lights, where if someone crosses a crossing while the lights are on, the camera would take a picture of their license plate, and send the appropriate fine.
That would be difficult anyway, since the truck driver was one of those killed. If the truck was stuck, it's possible that he stayed in that truck loaded with rocks to try to get it out of the way of the train. He could have just bailed.
If a vehicle were to ever get stuck on a crossing in the US, 1st thing ANY driver "should" do is find the blue sign and contact the number on it, not sure if the driver had time to do it, but it should be a priority to prevent any danger to the driver and any oncoming train.
