I was driving home yesterday and came up to a crossing that had the gates coming down. I see behind me a car that then passes me and—ends up crossing right in front of a train that was coming along at a good clip.[soapbox]
This got me thinking----after my heart recovered a normal beat[:-^]
What if there was some form of an Electromagnetic Impulse Device that could disable the car’s ignition system so that the “racing Fool” could not play the game of “Let’s Beat The Train”? Place that little thing at a crossing and eh-voila-----no car, truck, motorcycle goes across.
Of course, I know that the technology may not be quite there but one can dream I guess[:-^]
I doubt there is anything that will stop all the irrationalls from such stupid acts.
One item that I think would be effective to a large % of them might be a center barrier on the road back say…a couple hundred feet, that would force the so minded driver to take a 2nd thought. They actually do have such items in place in some parts of the world at RR crossings.
And what would we do when sitting there for all the “false activation” situations when the gates are down…with no train in site. Lets see we could all sit there with disabled cars that couldnt be restarted while the gates were down.
Perhaps we had better go back to crossing gatekeepers.
BTW, this is not to condone the running around the gates when a train is approaching.
This would work. Wherever Trax crosses major streets in the Salt Lake area, there is such a barrier (I have never estimated the length of any of the barriers). Where the two young men were killed recently in South Salt Lake, there is no such barrier; the street there is two lanes, except where it is one lane through an underpass beneath the RG; thus it was possible for the driver to go around the gate in his lane.
Yes, I believe most of us would agree with that. My thoughts on the center barrier, perhaps would prevent a certain %, but of course not all…Nothing can do that.
I have seen the center barriers and they do seem to work. Maybe the law should make them mandatory when possible on all future built grade crossings and when old crossing are repaved a or refurbished.
Many street intersections protected by traffic lights have an approach coil buried in the pavement. As soon as a large piece of steel, like an automobile, truck, or motorcycle, drives over the coil, the electric current passing through it is upset. A special circuit detects this abnormality and notifies a control circuit that a car is stopped and waiting for the light to change.
So at certain high traffic crossings, install the same type of detection system. When the flashers go off and the gates come down, energize the detection loops. If someone starts across the tracks, have the detection circuit fire off video cameras that would capture the license plate numbers - both front and rear. Two weeks later the car owner gets a summons to pay a $500-fine, et voila - problem solved.
More truth than poetry in that statement! It is really hard to defense against stupidity. An old story I’d heard on the road was, the story about bumper to bumper traffic, and how slow it moved, and there is always, always an individual who will pull out (to the right or left) and try and pass eveybody.
Seen that happen once on highway 400 north of Toronto ON. He went right----into the back of a parked OPP cruiser helping someone else out—thankfully no injuries–
I think we should just place big posters by the crossings with pictures of those killed by trains with the caption, “I thought I could beat the train, too.”
We already have red light cameras in Charlotte. It would be simple to add the technology to RR crossings. You would have to add the technology to determine if there was in fact a train. You wouldn’t want to send one of those tickets to some poor schnook who sat for 2 minutes at a false activation and the cautiously crossed.
I have seen a different problem more often than people running the crossing. Many more people stop on the crossing in bumper to bumper traffic. I have personally watched a panic stricken motorist trying to get off the tracks when the crossing gates came down.
We are decades past the time when we should have outlawed building any new grade level crossings and started a program to gradually eliminate the ones that already exist.
An educator I talked with recently told me that he was totally convinced that any campaign based on telling people NOT to play the game of “Let’s Beat The Train” will cause some fools to do just that.
Might as well get used to fix and/or repair daily I guess. Then we wonder why our healthcare is always expanding------[:-^] I work in healthcare. Do I like to see people do this kind of stuff? NOT[|(]