Another high-centered truck at a crossing that wasn’t marked as problematic for trucks. Luckily no one was hurt, and trailers are cheap. Here is the commentary of people in a car behind the truck, NSFW.
Um…look at the bottom photo in the article and then change your lead statement.
Trucker in deep doo-doo followed by the local road agency if that condition has existed for very long. (typical problem with a cross street running parallel with the railroad.)
Story I heard was truck got hung up trying to bypass a scale, the video was pretty good…
Couple of things…First if the driver WAS trying to bypass a State Inspection/Scale location, he is definitely in deep kimchee, on any number of different levels.
Secondly…As Mud Chicken points out to the presence of “Signage referencing the potential for ‘high centering’ at the point where the trailer and the Highway/Rail signal are present” There are potential problems for the local agency responsible for that crossing.
The trucker was very lucky, and apparently, had had presence of mind to disconnect his fifth wheel from the trailer before impact. Otherwise, the tractor and trailer would have been carried together and both demolished by the collision with the locomotive.
Wow, there you are, I didn’t catch that. I wonder why he was dodging the port (what truckers call “freewaying” for reasons I don’t know) with trail mix, which shouldn’t be over weight, he likely was either out of hours or “impaired”, which would explain why he missed that sign, too. It could be that he just didn’t feel like backing up and hoped he could make it.
At these Lat./ Long. coords, if I understand the location description correctly: N 37 10.115’ W 120 18.649’
Using Google’s Street View" at this location, the grade down on the NE side of the crossing definitely exceeds the AREMA/ AASHTO “Green Book” standards of 3" to 6" below the plane of the rails at 30 ft. from the near rail, etc. But that’s usually to provide enough clearance for low-bed type trailers -van-type trailers like this one usually don’t have that problem, and it (loosely) appears to me that it shouldn’t have gotten stuck (unless his front dolly wasn’t fully retracted ?)
- Paul North.
Looking at the video and then the intersection on Google Earth, this one is most likely caused by the highway parallel to the tracks dynamic, which still persists in our lovely state. The rubber tire bubbas set it up so there is a space between the stop line (or limit line, as we call it out here) and the near rail that is about 40 feet or less. Long vehicle combination comes up, stops and waits for traffic to clear, which doesn’t for a while, then the train comes and instant mess.
This happens once or twice a year in the San Joaquin Valley, and the RT bubbas shake their heads, the courts cite “design immunity” and the trucking company eats it. Often times, it is unnecessary because proper traffic engineering could alleviate the problem nearly completely. Nonetheless, the prevailing law and attitudes of the courts here is the RT bubbas can do just about anything and get away with it.
In this case, it’s not so easy for the traffic engineers, since the stop is made at one of the few remaining actual intersections on CAL-99, which is one of two major north-south* routes through that valley. The only real solution would be an interchange, which probably isn’t merited by the traffic on the side road, or to realign CAL-99 through the area to allow enough holding space for a legal-length combination of vehicles. No cheap options, though.
CAL-99 is mostly limited-access from Bakersfield to Sacramento, but there are still a few sections with intersections. The root-cause here seems to be the parallel highway issue, which to this day is problematic, to say the least. Highway parallel to railroad would have to go down as a classic example of “seemed like a good idea at the time” that ends up biting engineers and others at a later date.
Well that means that 2 of our 3 rail crossings are not in compliance including one state route. Is there a standard for regular trailers ?
I’m a vet, very short war, of the Hwy 99 parallel to the SP main.
Now, called 18-wheelers, trucks stopped waiting to access Hwy 99 with the trailer fouling the mainline. Us, the 79 mph San Joaquin Daylight. an intersection at grade?
We…
Instead of making the train seem like the “bad guy”, maybe the RRs and news organizations could get together and educate the public. This could be a wonderful accident, no one got hurt, but it demonstrates the power of a train, a perfect teaching tool.
The AASHTO Green Book/ AREMA joint standard does not make exceptions for different types of truck combinations, it’s a one size fits all solution.
The next time CA-99 is reconstructed at that location, hopefully they (Caltrans) either reconfigure with an interchange or raise the road surface in the intersection.
And it beats the heck out of spraying them with water and wishing people would be hit by the train. [xx(]
Considering how long it took Caltrans to put crash barriers on the columns of the I-5 overcrossing in Camp Pendleton, I wouldn’t hold my breath. OTOH, maybe Uncle Pete could start suing the state every time a truck is involved in a grade crossing collision as the truck in the original post…
- Erik
It looks, from the satellite view, that 99 is being rebuilt right there, moving it away from the tracks at that crossing. That rebuilding of 99 won’t directly address the high-centering problem, but perhaps getting rid of the old 99 might make it easier to address.
Then we had a train-truck collision on the NS Reading Line main late this past Wednesday afternoon, where the truck was stopped on the tracks. Other reports had it that the truck driver had parked on the tracks and gotten out and gone into a nearby diner to ask for directions, but that aspect doesn’t appear in this article:
Here are the other articles where it does appear (the comments are about what you would expect):
- Paul North.
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I would say based on several links saying the truck was left unattended, is that it is true. So either A) he forgot to set the brake and the truck rolled onto the tracks or more likely B) he was stupid enough to park on train tracks. Either way, he should have to pay for damages, and be charged guilty. The guy is an idiot.
When the thread started, the Google Earth image did not include the updated image with the construction. There’s a lot of construction going on on CAL-99 between Fresno and Sacramento right now and it is interesting to see what CalTrans is doing in the area of the crash. If they eventually close the south lanes of the old highway, then problem solved at that grade crossing.
Mercifully, it appears that the new section is being constructed as three lanes in each direction to begin with, which has helped so far along that route where they have gone to that alignment.
I wouldn’t go that far…there’s still the problem of high-centering for trucks going over the tracks. It should be able to be mitigated somewhat if the road can be adjusted better between the track and the new 99.
I wouldn’t go that far…there’s still the problem of high-centering for trucks going over the tracks. It should be able to be mitigated somewhat if the road can be adjusted better between the track and the new 99.