From the Oshkosh Northwestern:
http://www.thenorthwestern.com/article/20100422/OSH0101/304220175/1128&located=rss
Not sure how you run into the side of a train…
How??? Simple, by not paying attention. Little doubt in my mind that loud music, cell phones, texting, etc. ,etc. played a major part.
Striking the side of or behind the engines is a pretty regular occurence.
Calling OLI!
Only an 11-car train - so they wouldn’t have been waiting very long . . . [%-)] - the road doesn’t look to be real high-speed - clear, sunny, dry conditions, good visibility in the one photo - so MC’s explanation has a lot of plausibility.
- Paul North.
As Don/ Oltmannd also noted over on the current ‘fog’ thread, it seems to be about 1/4 to 1/3 as common as the train striking the vehicle. The FRA data from 5.11 - Hwy/Rail Incidents Summary Tables for Jan. - Dec. 2009 says there were 662 cars and 327 trucks hit by trains, whereas there were 205 cars and 77 trucks that struck the train instead. See:
http://safetydata.fra.dot.gov/officeofsafety/publicsite/Query/gxrtab.aspx
- Paul North.
If you go to the “additional photos” section of the article, check out the damage to the fuel tank in photo #4. The car must have been going at quite a clip to cause such damage. Trying to beat the train to the crossing, perhaps?
Here’s a link to the photos: http://www.thenorthwestern.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=U0&Dato=20100422&Kategori=APCNEWS&Lopenr=4220810&Ref=PH
Thanks for that link, zardoz [tup] - I was wondering where the additional photos were. As I surmised, not a lot wrong with the conditions at that crossing that morning - you can ever see the YIELD sign nice and clear ! [:-,]
How many people does it take to prevent and/ or clean-up a spill/ leak from that damaged fuel tank ? Must be quite a crowd, judging from photo #3 - I count 7.
And the side of that loco just looms HUGE over everyone. I’m sure the train crew felt something on impact, but it couldn’t have been too much - like a bird hitting the side of a car, I suppose. What were those goofs thinking ? [I know,I know - NOT !!
Happened to a friend of mine. He assumed that there’d never be a train at the crossing just south of our high school that was protected only by crossbucks and stop signs. Like everybody else, he just started running the stop signs and not looking. On the day of his accident, he entered the crossing at the same time as Amtrak’s westbound Capitol Limited running over an hour late. His car went into the side of the front truck of the lead F40, twisting the engine compartment upside down and shoving it into the front seat while spinning the car off into the field.
Kevin
The Appleton Post-Crescent had a nice article in it today about how wonderful the responders to the accident scene are/were in the performance of their jobs. Haven’t heard anything about the drier being cited…yet.