I don't blame the train company either.
Do people not realize the trains have the right of way on their rails at all times day and night?
Are you kids not taught train safety in schools? You know between their LGBT and sex ed studies? ha ha ha ha ha
Do they not teach train safety in drivers ed anymore?
Are people really this retarded and getting a Darwin award every two weeks?
I’m gonna side with the train company.
They make it sound like the trains are getting off the tracks and hunting people down.
I lived in Palm Beach County for about a dozen years, and this issue had become conspicuous before I left in 2024. I would suggest that an attempt be made to parse out the suicides. Not saying the problem goes away entirely, but it wouldn’t be so shocking after those are removed. After you take out the suicides, then cross-tabulate by age of driver, previous driving record, and level of intoxicants. I’m sure some marginal improvements can be made, but until you have lived there and seen the problem of people driving around barriers, you really won’t understand.
how difficult is it to stop and to carefully look both ways before crossing a railroad track, whether in a car, on a bike, or walking? ... is this a nationwide problem or only in florida?
With double tracks in rural areas you need to wait until the train on your side clears until you can see far enough down the track on the opposite side. If there are lights, sometimes people think the lights are slow but it is just a train running the opposite way.
How many passengers or rail employees have died?
I would guess zero.
This was a problem with the railroad operation in Gallup, New Mexico (probably still is). Drunks crossing the tracks and sometimes passing out right on the tracks.
I’m gonna have to drive down there and see this for myself. I feel strangely attracted to things like this.
The rest are the same people who cut off 18-wheelers in heavy traffic.
Not much that can be done. Maybe teach Newton's Laws of Motion?
Trains, like the large 18 wheeler trucks, cannot stop on a dime. WHEREVER we are, in town, on a day trip, or driving cross country, I am VERY careful about any kinds of rail tracks. In the city, it can be called “light rail.” If there is a guard gate that comes down, when it lifts to let us pass, I look both ways TWICE. If we are out in the boonies with no gates, I am even more careful. If some idiot behind us starts honking for us to go faster, I just pull over and let the fool pass.
You **can’t fix stupid** (or mental incapacitation).
No doubt the local governments there DEMANDED the train, so as to increase their ‘green’ cred. So now what, they’re changing their minds or something?
Tommy played piano like a kid out in the rain
Then he lost his leg in Dallas he was dancin’ with the train
They were all in love with dying they were drinkin’ from a fountian
That is pouring like an avalance coming down the mountian
People really are this retarded. Can’t seem to figure out that trains only run on train tracks
Keep racking up those Darwin Awards.
I grew up in Wallingford, Connecticut, a town of about 40,000 people over 100 square miles. The train line, which carries Amtrak and freight (but NOT Metro North) runs parallel to Route 5, the main street.
The trains horns blare when passing through, but nonetheless, pedestrians and bad drivers and their passengers sometimes got killed.
Each time, it was stupidity on the part of the one killed. I remember one woman was killed because she was walking on the track with a Walkman headset on.
So, I did a look up on Perplexity AI:
In 1992, three people were killed when a car was struck by an Amtrak train at a railroad crossing.
As of August 1992, a total of eight people had been killed in crossing accidents in Wallingford since 1985.
In 2012, a 21-year-old man, Giovanni Policard, died after being struck by a train near the Wilbur Cross Parkway.
In 2016, two individuals (Brittaney Tine, 24, and Robert Webb, 29) died after being hit by an Amtrak train.
In September 2020, a person was struck and killed by a train in Wallingford
Wikipedia’s list of major rail disasters in the United States from 1910–1919 also includes a 1913 accident in Wallingford, Connecticut, involving a stopped local train and multiple expresses, and it notes “86 deaths and 127 injured”—though some reports aggregate counts from multiple accidents or may refer to nearby towns
In my lifetime, all crossings had at least lights, and most had crossing gates as well. In my early childhood, there was a watch tower by the train station before it was all automated.
Sometimes the lights would stay on past there time, or go on when there was no train, but I have never known them to fail.
These are all due to negligence on the part of the pedestrians/drivers.
It would hard to think of a danger easier to avoid than getting hit by a train.
Most of these deaths are suicides. I was on Amtrak heading to New York when somebody jumped in front of our train. My business partner’s teenage son was on a train outside of Philly when someone deliberately walked in front of the train. Very common method of suicide.