An Altoona teenager, apparently drunk and passed out, was passed over by a train Sunday night.
He was not seriously injured.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110705/NEWS01/107050346/Train-passes-over-passed-out-teen
How some people manage to remain alive defies all logic.
I remember a similar thing happening in my hometown of Bucyrus, Ohio when I was a kid. Guy left the Mad Bull, walked down the alley to the Conrail tracks, and went to sleep between the rails. When he woke up, either Amtrak’s Broadway Limited or Capitol Limited was stopped over him.
Kevin
Lucky that was 136# rail (and no guardrail?)
Good Grief!
A couple of sobering experiences. Can imagine if either individual had awakened in a startled condition, and thrashed about. The outcome would have been much worse, than simply being scraped or cut.
Occurences like this have occurred periodically in subway operations. A person will stumble off the platform and land in the trough between the half-ties set in concrete usually found in subways. The third rail is usually on the side opposite the platform, making it less likely for the person to contact the third rail.
Unfortunately…this is not that uncommon of a occurrence.
Although railroad officials were skeptical about reports that a train rolled over an Altoona teenager Sunday night without seriously injuring him, a police sergeant says the teen was still under the train when he arrived on scene.
Further verification of what sounded impossible in the initial report.
Teens do that just for grins.
See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNgL_ZwGrqY&feature=related
God watches out for the cataclysmically drunk, and small babies…
They both seem to survive horrendous events on a regular basis.
“Courts of Equity have a tradition of aiding the helpless, such as Infants, Idiots, and Drunkards. The average security holder in a corporate reorganization is of like kind.” - Jerome Frank*, 1933 (Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as I recall)
*As quoted at the beginning of an article entitled “THE WRECK OF THE OLD 77 - A Requiem Review of Equity Interests In Railroad Reorganizations Under The Bankruptcy Act” by William Polatsek, in Vol. 34 of the Cornell Law Quarterly at pg. 532 (1948-1949), as found at:
(Yet something else worthwhile that I didn’t know was out there until I started looking for that quote, and stumbled across this article along the way . . . [:-^] )
A quote from the late Cubs announcer Harry Caray on a Minneapolis morning radio show:
“That night train is a mean wine”.
In the last 10 years, there have been 2 passed drunks killed by trains, and last winter a college kid crawled in an open boxcar and passed out. The train stopped 40 miles later, after doing some switching much further back on the line. He finally came to, hopped off of the train, walked 2 steps and then fell down and froze to death.
Yes, he was drunk.