That was extremely close. Was he stuck or trying something?
https://www.foxnews.com/us/california-police-officer-wheelchair-man-train-rescue
Man, that’s a good cop!
The man in the wheelchair? Attempted suicide? Chair wheel caught in the gap? Mentally out of it? Who knows? A paucity of information there.
Have you ever looked at the operation of the leading wheels of most wheel chairs ? Just turn the direction of a wheel chair less than 5 degrees and the wheel(s) swivel. Then one or both leading wheels may drop into the gauge side gap possibly up to 3 or 4 inches. I personally know someone who that happened to fortunately no train coming. Rescued by a man close by.
Speculation — The man may have been crossing and hears the train. He then looks that way causing the wheel chair to turn and leading wheel(s) dropping into guage side.
Have you ever looked at the operation of the leading wheels of most wheel chairs ? Just turn the direction of a wheel chair less than 5 degrees and the wheel(s) swivel. Then one or both leading wheels may drop into the gauge side gap possibly up to 3 or 4 inches. I personally know someone who that happened to fortunately no train coming. Rescued by a man close by.
Speculation — The man may have been crossing and hears the train. He then looks that way causing the wheel chair to turn and leading wheel(s) dropping into guage side.
We have a crossing that is regularly crossed by several persons daily to get to drug store, local 7-11, PO, bank, city hall, etc. It is protected by lights and gates.
https://goo.gl/maps/7dEEfyp9ryPnt6oA8
There’s the crossing on streetview. I can pretty much guess what happened - and see a major issue that was probably at play.
What time of day was this? Sheesh, you can see trains coming a mile away in either direction.
I can see an easy fix, though, one that can be retrofitted easily to these crossings. Make up ‘bars’ of relatively distinctive color plastic that can serve as cross ‘rails’ on either side of the railhead and flange gap,. spaced to guide wheelchair wheels without letting them turn. Then clearly mark that any wheelchair or scooter users have to engage these rails when crossing safely.
Alas! the discussion has been had about crossings that ‘anticipate’ when a train is coming and activate an ‘early warning’ for slow-moving people using the crossing. If I remember correctly, railroads saw the necessary scheduling as a risk to proprietary operations information that could be easily extracted by casual observation.
Or you know, not have the crossing apparatus bolted in the middle of the sidewalk?
Well, it IS Gavin Newsom’s California. Perhaps they thought it was a helpful ADA appliance to aid people needing something to push off from to get a boost across.
As I recall the Californians had a similar problem with those idiot ‘no straight through’ gates for bike paths, which you couldn’t negotiate easily in a wheelchair. Ot-nay oo-tay ight-bray, as we used to say in the East.
For what it’s worth, oh brother do I agree with you.
umm…ok…?
Haven’t heard pig Latin in a long time.
ixnay on the ottenray. Young Frankenstein
Glad this “evil” policeman wasn’t defunded.
Was that political crap comment really neccesary here?
Zugs: Who gets the “come to jesus” moment, the City Engineer or the CA PUC who approved the design? WCH has a secondary pedX-ng gate to cover sidewalks going behind the gate, but the road agency probably did not want to pay for it and CaPUC probably did not see the need for it.
Mod: anything placed above the top of rail is a bozo no-no. (FRA/CaPUC/AREMA)…the same goes for any striping in the foul zone
Especially when variants of it are almost the whole of the very long, very tiring comments section of the original article on the story. With posters every so often thinking they’re the first to have the amazing relevant thought!
Look there for your fix if you want to discuss defunding… many more potentially appreciative readers there.
Going up and down the street, at least they are consistent. Holy cow, I’m guessing they widened the street at one point?
How about filling the gaps with something resilient that would support the weight of people but squish down under the rail traffic? I seem to remember seeing that somewhere, but I’m trying to remember where. Maybe it was streetcar tracks.
Sorr, I’m just so tired of it all.
It still wouldn’t surprise me if the ADA people pushed something like that through. Practicality is often barely an afterthought.
From what I could make out from the video, this wasn’t your garden variety wheelchair, with skinny wheels - it was a motorized version. Those usually have some pretty fat wheels on them. In fact you can catch a glimpse of the rear caster wheels in the video.
Said chair also appeared to be oriented along the tracks, instead of crossing them. If he was simply crossing the tracks, this might mean he panicked and tried to turn around.
Or he got confused with the controls, or maybe the battery chose that moment to die.
Don’t forget, while the leading edge of the wheel is pushing down, the trailing edge is pushing up.
Locally here there is a rubber-like gasket piece that they put in some crossings to flush up the gap.
They don’t seem to hold up very well, and need changing more often than whoever is responsible seems to be willing to change them out.
Basically a “bolt-on” failure point, from my perspective.