Another sad occurrence for Amtrak and for the passengers in the car involved:
LAKELAND, Florida (AP) – An Amtrak train struck a car at a railroad crossing Monday, killing four people in the car, police said.
Rescue workers at the scene of Monday’s train crash which killed four in South Florida.
There were no injuries on the train, authorities said.
The car drove around the crossing gate, witnesses said. The impact threw the car into the air, and the train came to a halt about 300 yards down the track, they said.
“The car is totally demolished,” Lakeland police spokesman Jack Gillen said.
The Silver Star was traveling from Miami to New York with 161 passengers aboard, Amtrak spokeswoman Tracy Connell said. The train had stopped in Tampa before the accident.
It was not immediately known how fast the train was going or what caused the accident. The authorized speed for that area is 79 mph.
Today, July 17 another Amtrak train was involved in yet another fatal grade crossing accident when a truck driver drove in front of a train near Tampa. At least the truck driver was considerate enough to be the only victim (and fatality at that) in the vehicle. As of 5PM eastern, CNN has video of the aftermath.
I wish the press would start getting the stories correct. It should read something like, An automobile drove into the path of an oncoming train…They always seem to write these stories in away that they can blame the railroads.
Around here we have a notorious grade crossing that is angled and throws people off so there are accidents, thankfully not too many fatal. My town seems to be blaming the trains…Uhh, WRONG! But for someone who deliberately drives around the gates its just a senseless act of stupidity. One those unfortunate people in Florida will never have to repeat.
Unless it was a medical emergency…what were these people in such a big hurry for that they took their chances and lost?
I don’t live far from the main line where these two collisions occured. This CSX route was the former Atlantic Coast Line. Trains have been running at speed along this route since the 1930s. Amazing that in both accidents the drivers were people that lived in the area, so they should have known better than anyone that trains “whip” through at speed. Even CSX’s 100 car intermodal hot shots only take a few minutes to clear the crossings.
There are a number of crossings that have no gates, but have the “X-buck” with the STOP, LOOK, and LISTEN signage attachd to it that professional truck drivers are very familiar with.
Sad to say, but I can just imagine CSX officials justifying their positions as to why Amtrak is such a liability for them.
…And another Florida train {Amtrak}, smashed into a Concrete truck as reported on TV news earlier this morning…I don’t know which train it was, but believe they indicated the truck driver was killed and no serious injuries on the train…
It was the Silver Star (though not the same exact train as with the automobile collision). If I’m not mistaken, the Silver Star is run in 4 sections in order to provide daily service on its route.
The Silver Star is now the only Amtrak train that runs between Tampa and Lakeland (unfortunately). We also used to get the Silver Meteor, but Amtrak was forced to cutback the service some years back (courtesy of congress)…inspite of increasing demand from the public.
It is true that there is no point in trying to beat a train that will only take a minute to clear. But I doubt that most of the train beaters have any idea how much time the train will actually take. They go around the gates on an impulse because they associate a train with a possible long delay. They have this association because of past experience with trains that did cause a long delay. So they weigh the risk of beating a train against the risk of a delay. They make a split second decision to go for it. But the fatal flaw in their calculation to beat the train is that trains always appear to be moving slower than they actually are, especially to those unfamiliar with them.
Many traffic signals take more time to cycle back to clear than the passage of a train, but I never see anyone slow for a red light to see if it is clear, and then run it because they don’t want to wait for the cycle.
…Another thought {if they have any}, with people who go around the crossing arms is, most likely they have waited for freight trains so many times and perceive they all are travelling slow and “I can easily beat it” frame of mind and the one time {too many}, it is an Amtrak train possibly running as fast as 79 mph and that is the wrong one to try to beat…!
It is interesting how short the time cycle is. I count about six seconds from the time the gates are fully down to the time of the impact. It looks like the train was moving maybe the 79mph limit. My brother has a shop less than a mile from there. He said the impact threw the car over 300 feet through the air.