Twice in the past week…once last Friday and again yesterday afternoon, an Amtrak train headed from Chicago to California via the BNSF main line through Aurora hit cars on crossings just west of here. The link below will take you to the article in the Beacon News newspaper today (our local newspaper) with a description of the accident. When will people ever learn you can NEVER, EVER win in a train/car collission?
http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/beaconnews/news/1664115,Sandwich-train-crash_au071309.article
So tragic…Difficult to understand. What seems to be changing…? Driving habits…? Coincidences…? Are people simply not realizing the trains are still running, and especially, how fast some trains are running, such as a passenger train…? The level of concern and respect that a train is coming down the track, but not to worry too much, “I have the right of way”…!! Very confusing and tragic.
Even if they did have the right of way, in this case, they’d be dead right (literally).
The problem is that drivers (and reporters and tort lawyers) think that somebody ‘has’ the right-of-way. In fact, nobody ever owns the right of way. It’s something that drivers YIELD to others.
For fairly obvious reasons, trains can’t yield the right-of-way. Unfortunately, rubber-tire experience with stopping distances doesn’t help when checking an oncoming train. The fact that the front-end silhouette of a train is a lot bigger than that of a highway vehicle also serves to confuse the typical car pilot.
I was taught Newtonian physics before I was first licensed to drive. Maybe we ought to require our wonderful educators and state legislators to insist that all first-time license requests be accompanied by proof of having attended a basic physics course. If nothing else, it would help to separate the ignorant from the stupid.
Chuck