Fatal Frontrunner crash Pickup went around crossing gates

[Isolder74]

Truck goes around train crossing gates, gets the driver killed.

Why does anyone think they can get away with this?

Fatal Frontrunner crash / Pickup truck went around Clinton crossing gates, officials say

Last updated Monday, August 9, 2010 - 10:56pm

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CLINTON -- A 52-year-old Sunset area man was struck and killed by a FrontRunner train Monday night when he attempted to drive around crossing gates that officials say were in the down position.
The southbound train was likely traveling near its top speed of 79 mph and pushed the full-size pickup the man was driving approximately four blocks south, Utah Transit Authority spokesman Gerry Carpenter said. The accident occurred just before 8 p.m. at 475 W. 1800 North.

The driver of the pickup was likely killed instantly and was not identified pending notification of relatives, said Sgt. Harley Watkins, of the Utah Highway Patrol.

UHP is investigating the incident and does not know why the man attempted to drive around the crossing gates, Watkins said.

Troopers do not believe there were any passengers in the pickup, but were searching the crash site for signs of any other victim who might have been ejected from the vehicle as part of the investigation late Monday night.

There were 18 passengers on the train. One was transported to the hospital but appeared to have only minor injuries, Watkins said.

The accident was tragic because it was preventable, Carpenter said.

"These crossings have been upgraded and are as safe as they can be made," he said. "Through this area, the trains travel very quickly."

The driver of the FrontRunner will be placed on administrative leave during the investigation and provided counseling, Carpenter said. Standard procedure also requires the driver to be tested for drugs or alcohol, he said.

I have a cousin who is a train engineer and I know what the driver of the train must be going through right now. Why do people think they can try and beat the train. What was so important that the driver couldn't wait the 5 mins it takes for the transit train to pass?

[Kanastrous]

I sure hope that the train operator is surrounded by people reminding him every fifteen seconds that it's in no way his fault that some jackass decided to use the train as a suicide weapon.

[Guardsman Bass]

I've been seeing it on the news here (I live in Salt Lake City), and I agree - what was the driver thinking? The fact that he got slammed in the brief period when he was trying to drive around the gates seems to indicate that he didn't even bother looking to see if a train was coming before doing it.

EDIT: Good point about it possibly being a suicide attempt, although one wonders why he wouldn't just leap on to the track.

[Knife]

5 minutes? Pfft, take frontrunner about 20 seconds to pass, perhaps another 20 seconds before and after it passes for the gates. It's rather quick process to wait for the Frontrunner, so the guy is a total douchebag. Apparently happened next door to one of my friends parents house, lots of flashy lights the rest of the evening.

And if it is a suicide, I still have little sympathy for him. He's now cause trauma in the life of a lot of other people, the train engineer mostly, but passengers and witnesses.

[Isolder74]

KSL article. The headline says it all.

Link

UTA: Trains will always win in a collision
August 10th, 2010 @ 11:49am
By Anne Forester
CLINTON -- The Utah Transit Authority is warning drivers they can't win a race against trains after a collision between a FrontRunner train and a pickup truck killed a man when he tried to go around the crossing arms.

Trains may look like they're moving slowly, but UTA says that's an optical illusion.

"People think they have more time than they do, so they attempt to cross thinking they've got time to make it," said UTA spokesperson Gerry Carpenter. "They are very large, they are going very fast and they will be on top of you before you can react."

"It's really important to understand these trains don't have a lot of options. There's only one direction it can go, forward, and if there is an obstruction on the rail the train will always win." -UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter
If you try to beat the train, the results can be fatal.

A 52-year-old man from Sunset made that deadly mistake Monday night when he tried to go around the downed arms at a FrontRunner crossing in Clinton.

The train, traveling near top speeds of 80 miles an hour, collided with the man's truck, killing him instantly.

"As he went around those arms, the train was coming southbound, it hit the gentlemen and pushed him about four blocks south," said Sgt. Harley Watkins with the Utah Highway Patrol.

UTA says the crossing at 1800 North and 400 West is equipped with current safety measures in accordance with national standards.

"There's concrete medians to prevent people from driving around the arms and we have full signals, crossing arms," Carpenter said.

Still, he said, "Someone who is determined to try and get around them can do so, and clearly in this case that was a tragic mistake."

Since FrontRunner commuter rail service began, there have been five accidents involving cars. Monday night's collision is the only fatal one. There have been three pedestrian accidents, two of which were fatal.

"It's really important to understand these trains don't have a lot of options," Carpenter said. "There's only one direction it can go, is forward, and if there is an obstruction on the rail the train will always win."

The people onboard the train at the time of the accident Monday night were not seriously hurt in the crash, though one woman was taken to the hospital with minor bumps and bruises.

UTA and law enforcement are investigating the crash.

[Kanastrous]

Hit the 'gentleman.' I didn't realize that a person so self-destructively impatient and stoopidly assholish as to be incapable of waiting for a train to pass merited description as a 'gentleman.'

I guess they just regard it as good practice to speak well of the dead...

[Isolder74]

KUTV

Davis County Man Dies In Crash With Commuter Train


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Reported by: Cristina Flores
Monday, August 09 2010
A 52 year-old man from Davis County was killed after his truck was hit and dragged about four city blocks by a Front Runner commuter train. The crash happened just before 8 p.m. on Monday at 1800 North and about 500 West on the Clinton/Sunset Border.



Highway Patrol Sgt. said witnesses saw the driver go around the crossing arms at the railroad tracks even though the arms were down warning drivers the train was about to pass. Gerry Carpenter, spokesman for UTA said the train, which was going southbound, was traveling at about 79 miles per hour which is normal speed. Keri Marsh, who lives just east of the tracks said she was sitting in her back yard when she heard a loud boom then a very loud screeching sound. She saw the train dragging the truck and it appeared the driver of the train was trying to brake. “There was smoke coming from that train like no other,” she said. Britain Bybee, who was walking his dog in the neighborhood saw the same thing. After the crash, he ran toward the tracks to see if he could help the driver who appeared unconscious. “The truck was annihilated,” he said. The bed of the truck was ripped of the cab, which was still wrapped around the front of the train.



Carpenter said the 18 or so passengers who were on the train were fine except for one person who suffered minor injuries. Those passengers were bused to another Front Runner stop.

[Soontir C'boath]

This certainly comes to mind. I think they need to start putting up images showing what will happen to them if they try to attempt such a stupid act.

[bobalot]

I work in the railways in Australia. I can confirm the number one reason for train drivers being away from work for extended periods of time or simply quitting is when they kill people.

You would be surprised how many people are hit or killed running across the track or in some rarer cases driving across level crossings. There are a lot of people who commit suicide on the tracks.

It's not just the driver that is effected. There is the emergency rail workers who have to clean up the mess and get the track operational as soon as possible. After all, the trains must run.

[Cecelia5578]

I'm more inclined to chalk it up to stupidity.

I take commuter rail on a regular basis, and the sheer stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. The worst offenders are people who try to sneak under/around the crossing gates to get to the right platform before the train arrives, or dumbfucks who are too busy on their smartphones to realize that an express train is coming through the station and they are really, really close to the edge of the platform.

[Broomstick]

What kills some people around here at train crossings - aside from stupidity and suicidal inclinations - is a fear of being late to work and losing their job. Nevermind that hundreds of thousands of people take trains to work every day in a city like Chicago, many employers will accept no excuse for tardiness and simply fire your ass. Now, I don't feel that's worth getting killed over - but some folks have fucked up priorities.

[Cecelia5578]

What kills some people around here at train crossings - aside from stupidity and suicidal inclinations - is a fear of being late to work and losing their job. Nevermind that hundreds of thousands of people take trains to work every day in a city like Chicago, many employers will accept no excuse for tardiness and simply fire your ass. Now, I don't feel that's worth getting killed over - but some folks have fucked up priorities.

It helps in my case to be reliant on public transportation, rather thank taking a car, parking at a lot, and taking the train in from there. I *know* public transportation schedules always break down, and when I have to take light rail or a bus to connect to commuter rail (Caltrain) I always leave early.

To a certain degree then, having a car allows you to roll out of bed at the last minute and not pay attention to schedules and making connections. Sure, it sucks having to wait 15 minutes sometimes if I'm early, but that's what iPods were made for.

[Broomstick]

My feeling as well (I rode commuter trains and buses to work for 25 years), and in any case, I'd rather be fired than dead. I was on a train that hit someone once, and the memories are still entirely too vivid of what little remains I saw, despite it occurring nearly 30 years ago. Some things stay with a person. In that case, the train driver was in hysterics and had to be sedated at the scene. I still wonder what happened to that poor man.

[Night_stalker]

I've been seeing it on the news here (I live in Salt Lake City), and I agree - what was the driver thinking? The fact that he got slammed in the brief period when he was trying to drive around the gates seems to indicate that he didn't even bother looking to see if a train was coming before doing it.

EDIT: Good point about it possibly being a suicide attempt, although one wonders why he wouldn't just leap on to the track.

Well, my theory is that the driver was thinking "Ohh, I have plenty of time to cross this before the train--- wait, OH SHI---" Seriously though, who the hell thinks their little pickup can stop a 285,000 pound vehicle?

[RedImperator]

The optical illusion is real. I've seen it at train stations and standing trackside watching freight trains. The train seems like it's a long way away and going very slowly, or even stopped, and then suddenly it blows up in your vision and it really is right on top of you and hauling ass. It's more pronounced at night, when all you can see is the headlight.

[Cecelia5578]

The optical illusion is real. I've seen it at train stations and standing trackside watching freight trains. The train seems like it's a long way away and going very slowly, or even stopped, and then suddenly it blows up in your vision and it really is right on top of you and hauling ass. It's more pronounced at night, when all you can see is the headlight.

Its easy to see at Caltrain stations where there is a long straight away heading into a station. If you look down the track you can see a train a long ways at a distance, and it looks like its standing still. Granted, trains run with their lights on during the day and have bells and horns they activate when approaching stations and grade crossings, but shit still happens.

Here in the Bay Area, the most vocal activists against grade separation are rich NIMBYs in affluent cities who don't want high speed rail built, which would require grade separation (which would include Caltrain, our commuter rail line).

[Night_stalker]

How the hell does someone ignore the numerous and obvious warning signs that all clearly show that a train is coming? Actually Driver's Ed should show you the wreck of a car after it's been in a accident with a train, just to prevent that sort of thing.

[RedImperator]

In Gloucester County, New Jersey, you had moron NIMBYs fighting an expansion of PATCO (commuter rail into Philadelphia) that would have led to grade-separated crossings because "our kids need a place to play". For serious. The tracks in question, incidentally, are live: Conrail runs local freights on them several times a day.

[Broomstick]

Regarding truck vs. train accidents - some years ago in my area we had a commuter train hit a truck coming out of the Gary steel mills fully loaded with new metal. In that case the train lost -the driver of the truck was unhurt and the payload was only shifted a few meters. The train, however, had the first two cars destroyed, they sort of peeled apart and went around the steel coils. Killed several people on the train.

Which is why I stay the fuck out of the way of the traffic coming out of the steel mills.

Of course, assholes and idiots cut those trucks off in traffic and do all sorts of dumb shit. Of course, those trucks are only slightly more steerable than a train, and just as unstoppable. The drivers call them "suicide runs" because if anything stops the cab of the truck the load just keeps going forward - which is Very Bad for anything sitting in the cab.

So, I'm going to amend the statement to unless you're driving a full cargo truck of steel out of a mill whatever you're driving is definitely going to lose against a train. I don't care how beefed up, manly, and uber your pickup or SUV is, it's going to lose against a train. Any train. No matter how small or "light rail". In other words, don't play chicken with the train.

[RedImperator]

I've seen SUVs smashed like old beer cans by trolleys, which are about as light as light rail can go.

[FSTargetDrone]

Anybody wondering why this individual may have thought he would survive a collision (assuming it wasn't suicide) is giving the driver too much credit. I doubt the thought ever entered his mind before he turned into a red stain on the front of the train.

Some people simply do not think of these things. They don't think about much at all and stupidly ignore safety equipment in their rush to get where they are going when it comes to crossing tracks.

I live near a regularly-used freight line (Norfolk Southern, part of the old Pennsylvania Railroad route) that crosses at least 2 streets in the tiny town I live in and more than once I've seen people drive around the gates. The engine's horns are audible long before it arrives and even so, people just ignore it. These trains aren't even going that fast (unless it's just the engines traveling on their own) and can take several minutes to clear the crossings (the last time I was near the gates during a crossing I counted 80+ cars before I quit) but it's still fast enough to kill very quickly.

Hell, I've seen people running past the gates after they drop. Me, I'm fairly paranoid about the crossings. I check the tracks before I drive across even when the gates are up.

[Kanastrous]

To the degree there's a bright side, having been squished in this mishap means that that particular driver is out of circulation and will therefore be unable to perpetrate some chunk of dumb-assedness that gets someone else killed...

[Broomstick]

What was this person thinking? I think part of the problem was that he wasn't thinking, he was way too focused on whatever he was going to.

Of course, there ARE dumbasses who get a cheap thrill out of playing chicken with trains like that... well, until that one time they lose...

[Eleas]

This is in no way surprising. I lived for most of my life near the tracks. Local kids would place coins of a particular denomination (lately, this would be the thicker 10 kr "gold" coin) on the rail just to see it flattened into a disc. This little town carried (back then, I don't know about today) the distinction of having the highest statistical incidence of death-by-train in Sweden; mainly, it would be drunks stepping in front of the train. Well, that's Åkarp for you. They do produce a lot of drunk assholes, after all.

So of course, it wasn't until several years after I'd moved out that I actually experienced my first traditional Åkarp suicide; this time as a passenger. There was not a bump that I could tell. The train just coasted to a halt about 200 meters after impact. The crew, as per SOP, were replaced, and the train itself hosed down before continuing. When I left the car, the only remaining evidence was a single ruler-straight stripe running along the side, perfectly horizontal. It looked like someone had drawn on it with a brown marker.

I then decided there are some days when train drivers have a really sucky job.

[CmdrWilkens]

I used to (for about 2 years before being downgraded) take the MARC train in to DC from just south of Baltimore. The line I used to ride on (MARC has 3 total) shares trackage with Amtrak and the Acela of course runs the DC-NYC route right through there as well. Since I was at one of the low platform stations it really was an amazing experience when one of the Acela trains would go by. We were right in a good section of track with a MAS of 120 and I've seen backpacks, briefcases, and a whole host of things literally picked up and dragged along by the negative pressure just in the wake of those trains. Standing 5' away as they rumble past...you wouldn't even be a smear you'd be atomized in a collision.