It happened Thursday (10/21) night. Police responded to a car stuck on the tracks. You can hear on the video the officer requesting the UP be called because the car is blocking both main tracks. You can also hear the officer asking if the UP has been reached because he thinks he sees a train approaching.
The bad news is the call didn’t get through in time. The good news is no one was hurt. The investigation continues.
Initial dash cam shot indicated the time as 19:43.35 when you hear the officer request UP be notified. Flashers began operating at 19:44.58…1 minute 23 seconds later…
I doubt the local police had even dialed UP in that amount of time, let alone gotten the word to the dispatcher controling the territory or contacted the train.
Moral of the story - don’t drive off the road at railroad crossings.
What bothers me here is the claim in the news report that it only took ten seconds after the flashers started before the train to go through (as if that would have made any difference). They’re supposed to take, what, about 21 seconds? The timer at the bottom didn’t help, because it didn’t show when the flashers started working. I suspect that it was longer than the ten seconds claimed. Either that, or the train was traveling at about 90, which I don’t believe, do you, Jeff?[;)] I’m sure that these things can be checked out, if they’re considered to be an issue.
Another thing: again, it probably wouldn’t have made much difference in this instance, but would it violate some sort of protocol for the officer to directly notify the UP crossing hotline instead of going through his dispatcher? The number should have been present at the crossing, and the first option you get when you call is the chance to do something if this is a police emergency requiring trains to be stopped. It might have saved precious seconds. Of course, the smart thing would have been for the errant driver to make that call, but we don’t know his mental condition (was he sober enough to be thinking things through clearly).
While the editing of the dash cam footage doesn’t give the exact start of the flashers…it does show that they were flashing at least 14 seconds before the moment of impact. I suspect in editing the footage for airing, signifigant elements were omitted as the TV station would have considered that ‘dead time’ and not worthy of being shown.
Maximum speed there is 70 mph thru there. They couldn’t be doing much over that because the Automatic Train Control has a high speed limiting feature that is set at 73 mph.
I wonder if she meant that 10 seconds after the gates were fully down, the train went over the crossing. That would be more likely than the train going over the crossing only 10 seconds after the lights and gates were first activated.
In this case it seems like time was just too short. One poster on a Yahoo group I’m on asked why the PD didn’t contact the UP right away when a car stuck on the tracks was first reported. Instead the poster said they (PD) waited until an officer was on the scene before notifying the UP. I hadn’t thought about that. I guess I’m not clear on whether the officer came across the car or it was reported by someone else. If it was, and I’ve been assuming it was, a reported incident calling the railroad right away may have prevented this. Even with scant information (report of a vehicle stuck on the tracks in Nevada) the railroad could have stopped all traffic. (There are two UP lines that go through Nevada, the ex-CNW east/west and the ex-RI north/south tracks.) If the officer came across this, there just wasn’t much time.
Although it may not have stopped the train in time, one other thing the officer could’ve done is to light a fusee. I don’t blame him for not doing this, but maybe law enforcement should be taught to immediately protect a vehicle on the tracks with a couple of fusees on the tracks, It may not prevent the collision, but at least it could give the train a chance (in most, but not all cases) to slow down. I would think a slower speed impact would be preferable to a higher speed impact.
There’s been more discussion on the local Yahoo group about this. It does seem that the officer just came across this car stuck on the tracks. That would mean there was very little time to act.
In all probability, there wasn’t much of a chance that the on coming train could’ve been contacted in time to prevent a collision. If the motorist had called the hotline then maybe there might have been enough time. Even then if he had just got hung up on the tracks just before the officer arrived, maybe not.
Could have, would have, should have do not have a place in these discussions. What happend, happened!
Procedures and protocols exist for reasons…the reason is that they work most effectively most of the time. As in life there are always exceptions to every normal occurence…the fact remains that a replaceable, unoccupied vehicle was trashed because it’s operator could not, for whatever reasons, keep it on the paved highway and got himself stuck on the tracks. Something that happens daily or more frequently everywhere the railroads operate. Keeping vehicles on the roadways and stopping short of crossings when automatic protection is operating is a good way to keep one’s car in one piece and one’s self alive.
Perhaps not in these discussions, although that doesn’t leave anything to discuss then. But among the professionals investigating incidents, an examination and questioning of the effectiveness of the existing procedures and protocols is part of the methodology to improve on them and hopefully prevent accidents. They aren’t carved in stone.
When I was a teenager in the 1980s, my family would take trips to Fresno, CA every so often to visit family friends. On our way to their house one night, during a rainstorm and poor visibility, my dad made a premature right turn at the grade crossing and onto the tracks. Our family’s station wagon was stuck and on the tracks and the rain wasn’t helping.
We all got out of the car of course but we started to hear the crossing gates go down and a horn go off in the distance. The SP yard was located nearby.
Fortunately some people helped us out including a truck driver, other motorists and the innkeeper of the motel across the street called the railroad. I heard a train coming but never saw it arrive so I guess he was successful in alerting the SP to halt the train. About half a dozen guys came out and helped lift the rear of the station wagon and my dad was able to drive off the tracks. Phew! What a harrowing adventure!