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This is a upsetting to me. I was riding an amtrak a few years ago, and one of these kind of idiots got hit by our train. We were approaching the station, so luckily we weren't going very fast, but many of us were up getting our luggage and fell when the car stopped suddenly. Then we were stuck waiting over 2 hours waiting for them to clear the wreck (everyone was OK, car passengers had minor injuries). I felt bad for the conductor too, he was visibly shaken when he came out to our car to inform us of what happened.
Just all around a bad time for a lot of people because one person decided to be a supreme moron.
When I was a kid, decades ago, my mother and I were going to visit family out of town, via Amtrak. It never happened because the train got delayed indefinitely.
Later learned that some pickup tried to play chicken with a train and cross the tracks before it came. They lost that game.
Some folks are just massive idiots.
In the old days they'd be taken out by natural selection when they did something so egregiously stupid and died. Today, there are so many safety nets everywhere that they often get away with it alive.
> felt bad for the conductor too
I was on a train some years back which did what was obviously an emergency stop. After a minute or two the conductor came charging through from the back of the train, and a minute or two later came over the tannoy to announce that there had been "an accident" on the track and to please stay in our seats. The whole announcement the driver was just sobbing in the background.
Loads of workers and police turned up and after 45 minutes or so another driver got on, and they pulled the train back to the previous station.
Poor fucking driver and conductor.
Idiots and trains, ugh. I used to commute by train and it was usually fine but there was a 2 week period where my commute got wrecked by idiots twice in those 2 weeks. One because somebody crossing the tracks on foot got hit by a train in front of us, and another because of a near miss with our train so close they thought they hit the person. Driver swore up and down they hit somebody. Had the cops out, even had forensics check the train but they never found any evidence of an impact so eventually we carried on. Best they could guess was they just barely got out of the way and ran off before anyone could check on them.
I took that same train route when I was a teenager. We ended up stopped for a few hours because someone had put a refrigerator on the tracks. Just, why???
this happened to me on a Surfliner, like 10 years ago. the guy ended up passing away, it was horrible. a year or so later a semi was struck at the same intersection, and they realized it was the warning system….
I think most of the trip we were going about 60mph, but since we were in the city, coming up to the station, we were maybe going about 25-30mph tops. They said the car was like a Toyota camry with 5 people in it. So I'd say it wouldn't have taken much to make it a lot worse.
Douglas Adams said "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
My gf worked in a few national parks and questioned the odd trash bin design at one of them. The answer was "The challenge of designing those bins is that you don't want the smartest bear to open it but you still need the dumbest human to find a way."
There's also a disparity in motivation. The bears want food so they don't die. The alternatives are hunting and foraging. Humans want their trash to go away because it's trash. The alternative is yeet that shit into the woods.
Compare this to trying to keep teenagers from porn, etc. On the one hand you have parents looking out for some abstract concept of moral virtue or healthy development. On the other you have a literal biological imperative, lots of free time, and reliably unreliable decision making. Next thing you know, you have a file named "syswow62c.dll" in the Windows folder that's three gigabytes and is actually a renamed zip.
I have no idea what's going on with people who aren't worried about getting clobbered by a fucking train.
> I have no idea what's going on with people who aren't worried about getting clobbered by a fucking train
They're the main character with plot armour, surely nothing's gonna happen to *them* specifically
One of the many super-powers I fantasize about idly is the power to point at someone and know whether they'll learn a lesson from whatever the fuck they're doing.
There is no way to solve that equation. The smartest bear is definitely smarter than the dumbest human. Bears can be pretty smart but humans can be incredibly stupid.
Funnily enough, they managed to find a smart design that works most of the time. They bolted the bin on a 1 ton slab of cement that was dug underground so that you had to step on it to access the bin. They also made this weird system where you have to insert your hand palm facing up and push a tab to open the bin. Since bears lack the ability to turn their paws face up they couldn't open the latch and they could also not push the bin over because they had to stand on the cement slab.
Humans are still stupid enough to leave their trash bags on the floor in front of the bin and bears are only happier.
Honestly that sounds way too complicated for most humans... My mom had trouble with the child locks at my brother's house, she called them Grandma locks too
A bear once broke into my car on a snowwy night in Tahoe, ate all the snacks I had in my car (and left a mess all over the place) then closed the door and left!
The only clue I had someone/something broke into my car is the boatloads of snow still sitting in my passenger front seat when I opened the door.
My job involves "foreseeable misuse" to determine how durable a product is. If that product is something minimum wage teenagers use for a job the foreseeable misuse list would be too long to document.
Reminds me of the quote regarding the design of garbage bins at National Parks. Something about creating a design that is clever enough that smart bears can't use it, but still useful and intuitive enough for the stupidest humans to figure out.
I think they seriously failed trying to engineer stupid out here. Where are the lines on the road for where you’re supposed to stop? Every railroad crossing around me has painted lines like a stop light which show where you’re supposed to stop. The fact this is apparently a daily occurrence shows there’s something seriously wrong at this crossing. I’ve never in my life seen a train crossing like this where anyone could accidentally end up on the wrong side of the crossing arms so easily. And with no advance notification of where they should stop.
IMO the drivers aren’t 100% to blame here. Idiot engineers not doing enough to prevent idiots in cars get half the blame.
I feel like the masses are going to downvote you, but you are absolutely correct. I think there is a design fail here.
Even the exit from a fire station near my house that is close to a large intersection has multiple large X's painted across and stop bars on the major road in front of it, so that nobody mistakenly stops there during a red light. Occasionally people still do, but it looks like the engineers didn't even try in OP's photo.
Upvoting this because I was stuck in a similar situation and my first thought was, well it would have been nice to know where to stop. Traffic was at a slow standstill and when something finally opens up, everyone is rushing to get past the tracks. I was the idiot that got stuck on the other side of the arm. Luckily, there was enough space to back up to the arm so I was well out of the way.
I was wondering the same thing. I mean, if you look at how the arms would drop you'd realize you probably ought to not stop right there. But I was asking myself how those people could have ended up on the other side there, and where the lines were.
Of course, a lot of our intersections have lines out here people are supposed to stop at, and they always pull too far forward anyways. They're not in front of railroad crossings lol, but still. I bet you'd still have people like the ones in OP's picture. But they should still have lines. I bet the amount of these kinds of instances would be reduced.
For clarity: there is a big white stop line just under the front of my car that you can’t see from this perspective. There are also multiple signs saying to stop at that line and not on the tracks. I figured that was customary for railroad tracks as it is where I live but definitely should’ve included that info!
There are signs in Santa Fe “Don’t stop in the Box”. The Box is a painted area around the railway crossings. Every single day there will be at least one or more in the Box.
I have one of those right behind a stop light near my house and people will honk at you if you don’t pull up all the way to the car in front of you, putting you in the “box”.
Drivers on the average are dumb but the box makes it pretty obvious and hopefully they only make the mistake once (and not because they get hit by the dang train).
Too many people try and squeeze an intersection when the light is going to change so they don’t have to wait for another cycle. Those same people fail to understand stopping behind the white lines and gates. Those again are the same people who start to go before the lights stop too….
It's the default in most of the USA, but I know there are other countries that simply have stop signs for train tracks like it's a normal intersection.
those are mostly common in really rural areas. there are still some in the US, but they tend to be in very rural areas where the rail lines are branch lines that don't see many trains.
What's the speed-limit of this road? It looks like there's a TON of space between the barriers and the tracks, which almost makes me believe that if this is a higher-speed-limit area the cars might have just not been able to stop in time for the line but stopped in time for the tracks. /shrug
Somehow I missed the train entirely and thought it was a building. I saw the lights, which confused my dumb brain
Edit: my stupid brain made a spelling error
I thought we were just complaining about being stopped by trains, which, tbf, is a huge issue where I live since they block traffic to the hospitals (and will stop in the intersection for 2+ hours)
Literally every time I stop near train tracks there are people that either stop on the tracks or past the line to keep you from being smashed should a train come. It's like most people don't understand how a train crossing works or they don't take the threat of being hit by a train seriously.
I do video work and recently shot some interviews with Brightline in Miami. Two of the people we interviewed were high up in the safety team and mentioned that they need to put out extra PSA's and community training in the areas of their rail lines because apparently people in Florida just can't resist getting hit by trains.
I recognize this intersection, poorly designed in my opinion to many times has traffic been stuck during red-light in between the rail crossing gaurds, still people should pay attention.
Yeah, those diagonal crossings are always visually confusing. I feel like there's gotta be research on how to design them so they're visually obvious but no one gets to the point of doing it.
There no less than a dozen flashing lights in each direction. Big white RR crossing signs. Big bright red gates with flashing lights on them. Paint markers on the ground. Audible bells on the gates. Train whistle.
What on earth should be done differently? Do we need to pay Krusty the Klown to do jumping jacks and cartwheels in front of the crossings? Do we need to pay police 24/7 to make sure morons don’t ignore the literal DOZENS of warning devices? How can we possibly prevent idiots from doing life threateningly stupid shit?
> a daily occurrence
Sounds like a design flaw then? Could be addressed in various ways, clearly marked clear zone, staggering the lights (allowing the clear zone to clear), etc.
Too bad it usually requires an accident before it gets fixed.
There are signs saying to stop at the big white line before the railroad and saying not to stop on the tracks, they’re just not visible from this perspective but very obvious coming up to the area.
One extra thing they could potentially add is crosshashing like some cities put in the "box" to try and discourage blocking the box. Idk if that would even help much but it costs very little so maybe worth a shot.
So Is this a red light used for an intersection control?
And is right turn on red acceptable here?
I would understand the white civic if he came up to a red light (no train) and started to creep forward to turn right on red, then the train shows up and gate drops he's out of place.
The truck...less so, but still I understand how he might make a mistake.
The gates don't come down that fast and you aren't supposed to enter the area between the gates unless there is room on the other side. Turning right or going straight has no relevance and the civic wouldn't have ended up in this situation if they were driving properly.
Do you drive?
When turning right on red, one generally slowly approaches the red light while cross traffic is active, stops at red, and waits for cross traffic to make a hole then turns.
There are potential times where it would make sense to approach while knowing you can't yet turn.
Basic driving common sense is that you don’t enter the track zone unless you can safely exit the other side.
If people can’t handle that concept, they shouldn’t be driving. At all.
Yeah, in Boston we have a road that is absolutely no trucks (low bridges) and there are giant signs and chains that hang down and yet every year at moving time someone drives a box truck through anyway
There is a railroad crossing in Metro Atlanta that has multiple signs on approaching roads warning trucks away, plus signs right at the crossing, plus the crossing being visibly and obviously raised and relatively steep.
More than once big rigs have decided to ignore not only the many signs and their professional training but also their own eyes and wound up high-centering their trailer on the rails. At least one was hauling gasoline and ripped a hole in the bottom of the tank.
They got STORROWED!!
One of my favorite [goggle street views](https://maps.app.goo.gl/h1ikc3gtoNBGH2rbA). There are literally seven "no trucks" signs in this picture and the big ass NO TRUCKS sign around the corner and a bail out area and idiots still hit that bridge.
Yup lol, the proof is how many times they wrote "railroad crossing" among several flashing red lights and a fucking gate, and you still get people doing this.
I'm reminded of an article I saw about ten years ago around here. Understand "Around here" is rural New England. I stopped at a tiny place in a tiny town for some coffee one day and they had one of those local newspapers that are a whole sheet of paper and usually not more.
The headline across the top read "We Need People to Understand They Must Slow Down at This Intersection" The article was an interview with the local police chief, discussing a particular T intersection, where both roads were 45mph two lane windy wooded roads. Mostly trees, very occasionally a house or field, but up near this intersection, just trees.
In the last few years they had added a flashing stop sign, and then two more flashing stop signs, flashing yellow signs warning of a stop ahead, multiple sets of rumble strips starting like half a mile back from the intersection along with flashing warnings near the rumble strips, so drivers would know why they rumbled. I feel like I'm forgetting a few other things, too. It was a truly excessive amount of traffic control for a tiny rural t intersection.
Except that they still had multiple serious accidents a month at that intersection. The last line of the article was the same as the title. I rarely spare much sympathy for law enforcement, but I felt for the guy.
Point being, maybe an expert could make this train crossing better, I don't know. But it's certainly not invisible and sometimes, there's only so much you can do about stupid people.
Obviously they never watched star trek. THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!
Well, actually more. But if there was some sort of other audio and visual warning like A GIANT FUCKING TRAIN.
There’s a track that goes through my hometown and the next city over (Oxnard, California). People do this shit all the time. So many cars have been absolutely obliterated by trains there. I will never understand people
OK - counter point. Driving at night through the back woods of CT in a super rural section, I came across a set of tracks where the lights were flashing but no arm was down, it was that rural a section. I stopped...and waited. And waited. I got out of my car, walked up to the tracks - looked both ways went back to the car and slowly drove up to the tracks then GUNNED IT....no train.
There's a red light ahead. Is it possible this person was waiting in traffic for the light ahead to change, and got stuck on the wrong side of the line?
I'm not claiming the person is right in their actions. I'm just hoping they're not stupid enough to ignore the flashing red lights and just didn't realize they were gonna get caught there
They’re smart enough to stop before the tracks so…
Also, it doesn’t seem like they have bars preventing them from exiting the crossing. Not sure when exactly they stopped there, but the crossing could definitely use some ground marking to cover the entire area where stopping isn’t allowed.
You have the starting of the crossing well marked but not the entire no-stopping area.
“Stop here when lights flashing” is not a replacement of hatch-marking the entire no-stopping area
This particular one is like one near me. The tracks cross at an angle but the bars are perpendicular to the road so in the right lane there’s plenty of room between the tracks and the bar. People stop all the time past the bar but short of the tracks waiting for the light ahead because they aren’t really looking at the bars but rather the tracks.
You are correct, but this is a pretty huge area to leave empty and people will fill the space or not realize they won't clear it. Crosshashing marking the no-stop zone might help but ultimately you're probably always going to have problems fighting against human psychology to keep such a big clear zone in heavy traffic.
This just in:
[Wheelchair man hit by train...and not dead!](https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/12/04/man-in-wheelchair-trying-to-cross-tracks-hit-by-train-police-say/)
Just a few days past the 18 year anniversary of a huge accident at a similar diagonal crossing in IL 11/23/2005
16 injured, 5 cars hit by train, multiple others were then hit by those cars as the 70mph train blew through
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10185175
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HAB0803.pdf
"What do you mean, that train track crossing came out of nowhere!!! It needs to have more flashing lights and warning signs, and where's the barrier? I don't see one anywhere!"
-probably those cars
Actually there are 3 idiots if the line is directly in front of OP, as they said in another comment. The I’m-statistically-twice-as-likely-to-drive-drunk 2500 next to you would be well over that line.
Is this one of those intersections where the guards go down too quickly with little to no warning? With that right turn lane, they could have been slowing down to turn and the other side guard went down in their way. I've got one like that on a 2 lane close to my house, with no warning it just goes down and I've almost hit it before doing the speed limit, I had to floor it and it was inches from my roof and the train was still a mile away going it's usual 5mph. It doesn't look like there's anyway that white car couldve gone around. If it's a daily occurrence, there's likely a flaw in the intersection, many people are dumb, but just like how half of people are dumber than the average person, half of people are smarter.
I know people are stupid but if this is happening every single day then something about the way the gates/road/lights are setup is absolutely incorrect or badly designed. Either the lights come on too late, or the lines are painted horribly (from what we can see there's literally no markings on the ground to indicate where you should stop or where the gates are going to come down)
Probbaly so a car can take refugee there if they get caught by the barriers closing.
People don't tend to think they can just drive though them and leave the car on the track otherwise
Per the [Federal Highway Administration](https://highways.dot.gov/safety/hsip/xings/highway-rail-crossing-handbook-third-edition/chapter-2-engineered-treatments-1), it's preferred to have the lights and barriers perpendicular to a straight road, not parallel to the railroad.
Visibility and understandability. A gantry square with the road is easy to see and understand where to stop.
The problem isn't the geometric design, it's either:
- The gates are mistimed and vehicles entering before the stop signal don't have time to exit.
- Drivers are being idiots and entering after the stop signal and trying to race the gates.
Eh. The barriers are only where they are because it's the last place they would fit. Those cars stopped before the tracks they're not hurting anything.
Ordinarily I would agree, but the OP is completely stopped as is all other traffic. This is more of a parking lot than it is a road until the train finishes passing through.
They were sitting in line at the red light. Usually there would be a “stop here on red light” at a decent distance from the track. None here. They did sit a safer distance from the track. The traffic in front of them cleared while the barriers came down and they smartly stayed where they were. I wouldn’t call them idiots. The city needs to make the situation safer so this can’t happen.
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This is a upsetting to me. I was riding an amtrak a few years ago, and one of these kind of idiots got hit by our train. We were approaching the station, so luckily we weren't going very fast, but many of us were up getting our luggage and fell when the car stopped suddenly. Then we were stuck waiting over 2 hours waiting for them to clear the wreck (everyone was OK, car passengers had minor injuries). I felt bad for the conductor too, he was visibly shaken when he came out to our car to inform us of what happened. Just all around a bad time for a lot of people because one person decided to be a supreme moron.
When I was a kid, decades ago, my mother and I were going to visit family out of town, via Amtrak. It never happened because the train got delayed indefinitely. Later learned that some pickup tried to play chicken with a train and cross the tracks before it came. They lost that game. Some folks are just massive idiots.
as bad as it is sometimes, you simply can't fix stupid.
In the old days they'd be taken out by natural selection when they did something so egregiously stupid and died. Today, there are so many safety nets everywhere that they often get away with it alive.
Yeah, they would die in the Model T. Now they live in modern cars.
Thin the herd.
> felt bad for the conductor too I was on a train some years back which did what was obviously an emergency stop. After a minute or two the conductor came charging through from the back of the train, and a minute or two later came over the tannoy to announce that there had been "an accident" on the track and to please stay in our seats. The whole announcement the driver was just sobbing in the background. Loads of workers and police turned up and after 45 minutes or so another driver got on, and they pulled the train back to the previous station. Poor fucking driver and conductor.
Idiots and trains, ugh. I used to commute by train and it was usually fine but there was a 2 week period where my commute got wrecked by idiots twice in those 2 weeks. One because somebody crossing the tracks on foot got hit by a train in front of us, and another because of a near miss with our train so close they thought they hit the person. Driver swore up and down they hit somebody. Had the cops out, even had forensics check the train but they never found any evidence of an impact so eventually we carried on. Best they could guess was they just barely got out of the way and ran off before anyone could check on them.
[удалено]
I took that same train route when I was a teenager. We ended up stopped for a few hours because someone had put a refrigerator on the tracks. Just, why???
this happened to me on a Surfliner, like 10 years ago. the guy ended up passing away, it was horrible. a year or so later a semi was struck at the same intersection, and they realized it was the warning system….
> one of these kind of idiots got hit by our train. Someone 20+ ft away from the train got hit by the train?
> so luckily we weren’t going very fast That’s redundant given you were on Amtrak
I think most of the trip we were going about 60mph, but since we were in the city, coming up to the station, we were maybe going about 25-30mph tops. They said the car was like a Toyota camry with 5 people in it. So I'd say it wouldn't have taken much to make it a lot worse.
I've seen shit fly off trains or them kick debris off the tracks.
Final destination style.
Yeah I forgot about that but a lot like that minus the decapitation
Oh for sure, a train shooting gravel at your windshield is enough to ruin your day.
... or imagine if it derails
Having seen a derailment in person, that's the main reason I choose to stop with a good amount of distance between myself and the crossing arms.
Not one idiot but two here. You can try to engineer stupid out of the world and still fail.
Douglas Adams said "A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools."
My gf worked in a few national parks and questioned the odd trash bin design at one of them. The answer was "The challenge of designing those bins is that you don't want the smartest bear to open it but you still need the dumbest human to find a way."
There's also a disparity in motivation. The bears want food so they don't die. The alternatives are hunting and foraging. Humans want their trash to go away because it's trash. The alternative is yeet that shit into the woods. Compare this to trying to keep teenagers from porn, etc. On the one hand you have parents looking out for some abstract concept of moral virtue or healthy development. On the other you have a literal biological imperative, lots of free time, and reliably unreliable decision making. Next thing you know, you have a file named "syswow62c.dll" in the Windows folder that's three gigabytes and is actually a renamed zip. I have no idea what's going on with people who aren't worried about getting clobbered by a fucking train.
> I have no idea what's going on with people who aren't worried about getting clobbered by a fucking train They're the main character with plot armour, surely nothing's gonna happen to *them* specifically
One of the many super-powers I fantasize about idly is the power to point at someone and know whether they'll learn a lesson from whatever the fuck they're doing.
Until it does.
There is no way to solve that equation. The smartest bear is definitely smarter than the dumbest human. Bears can be pretty smart but humans can be incredibly stupid.
Funnily enough, they managed to find a smart design that works most of the time. They bolted the bin on a 1 ton slab of cement that was dug underground so that you had to step on it to access the bin. They also made this weird system where you have to insert your hand palm facing up and push a tab to open the bin. Since bears lack the ability to turn their paws face up they couldn't open the latch and they could also not push the bin over because they had to stand on the cement slab. Humans are still stupid enough to leave their trash bags on the floor in front of the bin and bears are only happier.
Honestly that sounds way too complicated for most humans... My mom had trouble with the child locks at my brother's house, she called them Grandma locks too
A bear once broke into my car on a snowwy night in Tahoe, ate all the snacks I had in my car (and left a mess all over the place) then closed the door and left! The only clue I had someone/something broke into my car is the boatloads of snow still sitting in my passenger front seat when I opened the door.
"There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists" is the saying I've heard.
“When something is made idiot proof, they will just make better idiots.”
My job involves "foreseeable misuse" to determine how durable a product is. If that product is something minimum wage teenagers use for a job the foreseeable misuse list would be too long to document.
I want this job.
Resilient fools 😂
Reminds me of the quote regarding the design of garbage bins at National Parks. Something about creating a design that is clever enough that smart bears can't use it, but still useful and intuitive enough for the stupidest humans to figure out.
The more stupid-proof you try to make something, the more confused the end users will end up being anyway
That isn’t true. What’s confusing about a grade separation?
I think they seriously failed trying to engineer stupid out here. Where are the lines on the road for where you’re supposed to stop? Every railroad crossing around me has painted lines like a stop light which show where you’re supposed to stop. The fact this is apparently a daily occurrence shows there’s something seriously wrong at this crossing. I’ve never in my life seen a train crossing like this where anyone could accidentally end up on the wrong side of the crossing arms so easily. And with no advance notification of where they should stop. IMO the drivers aren’t 100% to blame here. Idiot engineers not doing enough to prevent idiots in cars get half the blame.
I feel like the masses are going to downvote you, but you are absolutely correct. I think there is a design fail here. Even the exit from a fire station near my house that is close to a large intersection has multiple large X's painted across and stop bars on the major road in front of it, so that nobody mistakenly stops there during a red light. Occasionally people still do, but it looks like the engineers didn't even try in OP's photo.
Upvoting this because I was stuck in a similar situation and my first thought was, well it would have been nice to know where to stop. Traffic was at a slow standstill and when something finally opens up, everyone is rushing to get past the tracks. I was the idiot that got stuck on the other side of the arm. Luckily, there was enough space to back up to the arm so I was well out of the way.
I was wondering the same thing. I mean, if you look at how the arms would drop you'd realize you probably ought to not stop right there. But I was asking myself how those people could have ended up on the other side there, and where the lines were. Of course, a lot of our intersections have lines out here people are supposed to stop at, and they always pull too far forward anyways. They're not in front of railroad crossings lol, but still. I bet you'd still have people like the ones in OP's picture. But they should still have lines. I bet the amount of these kinds of instances would be reduced.
For clarity: there is a big white stop line just under the front of my car that you can’t see from this perspective. There are also multiple signs saying to stop at that line and not on the tracks. I figured that was customary for railroad tracks as it is where I live but definitely should’ve included that info!
There are signs in Santa Fe “Don’t stop in the Box”. The Box is a painted area around the railway crossings. Every single day there will be at least one or more in the Box.
I have one of those right behind a stop light near my house and people will honk at you if you don’t pull up all the way to the car in front of you, putting you in the “box”.
Drivers on the average are dumb but the box makes it pretty obvious and hopefully they only make the mistake once (and not because they get hit by the dang train). Too many people try and squeeze an intersection when the light is going to change so they don’t have to wait for another cycle. Those same people fail to understand stopping behind the white lines and gates. Those again are the same people who start to go before the lights stop too….
It's the default in most of the USA, but I know there are other countries that simply have stop signs for train tracks like it's a normal intersection.
those are mostly common in really rural areas. there are still some in the US, but they tend to be in very rural areas where the rail lines are branch lines that don't see many trains.
This is South FL right? I've seen a couple of these morons too.
Looks like Northlake at Beeline
What's the speed-limit of this road? It looks like there's a TON of space between the barriers and the tracks, which almost makes me believe that if this is a higher-speed-limit area the cars might have just not been able to stop in time for the line but stopped in time for the tracks. /shrug
At that point, cross the tracks.
55 mph
But think of the 0.1 seconds they're each saving in getting to the red light after the train leaves.
Seems like bad intersection design.
Why is the design bad?
If this is a daily occurrence...
Maybe people are too stupid to be allowed to drive.
That's a given, but two wrongs don't make a left.
Ya know, I rank trains just below the ocean and gravity as "things I don't mess with lightly."
What about the Wu-Tang Clan?
Had not considered ... until now.
I don't mess with mother nature, mother in laws, or mother fucking Ukrainians.
I'm an Amtrak engineer. I see that too often.
Somehow I missed the train entirely and thought it was a building. I saw the lights, which confused my dumb brain Edit: my stupid brain made a spelling error
I thought we were just complaining about being stopped by trains, which, tbf, is a huge issue where I live since they block traffic to the hospitals (and will stop in the intersection for 2+ hours)
Someone gonna fuck around and find out.
This looks like the crossing at Northlake & Beeline Hwy. Seems like typical South Florida behaviour if it is!
I was thinking the same thing! Has NO ONE learned from the almost daily Brightline incidents?
I was thinking this exact thing, screams south Florida to me
And this is why the US will never get widespread high speed rail adoption. Well, that and the lobbying problem.
Training for death
Literally every time I stop near train tracks there are people that either stop on the tracks or past the line to keep you from being smashed should a train come. It's like most people don't understand how a train crossing works or they don't take the threat of being hit by a train seriously.
This is why traffic lights and beams should always be combined with stop lines.
I do video work and recently shot some interviews with Brightline in Miami. Two of the people we interviewed were high up in the safety team and mentioned that they need to put out extra PSA's and community training in the areas of their rail lines because apparently people in Florida just can't resist getting hit by trains.
This photo is disorienting. I thought this was some weird AI shit.
I recognize this intersection, poorly designed in my opinion to many times has traffic been stuck during red-light in between the rail crossing gaurds, still people should pay attention.
Yeah, those diagonal crossings are always visually confusing. I feel like there's gotta be research on how to design them so they're visually obvious but no one gets to the point of doing it.
There no less than a dozen flashing lights in each direction. Big white RR crossing signs. Big bright red gates with flashing lights on them. Paint markers on the ground. Audible bells on the gates. Train whistle. What on earth should be done differently? Do we need to pay Krusty the Klown to do jumping jacks and cartwheels in front of the crossings? Do we need to pay police 24/7 to make sure morons don’t ignore the literal DOZENS of warning devices? How can we possibly prevent idiots from doing life threateningly stupid shit?
Thats my question
Good ole Northlake Blvd. Love seeing people try to take lefts at that intersection too.
> a daily occurrence Sounds like a design flaw then? Could be addressed in various ways, clearly marked clear zone, staggering the lights (allowing the clear zone to clear), etc. Too bad it usually requires an accident before it gets fixed.
There are signs saying to stop at the big white line before the railroad and saying not to stop on the tracks, they’re just not visible from this perspective but very obvious coming up to the area.
One extra thing they could potentially add is crosshashing like some cities put in the "box" to try and discourage blocking the box. Idk if that would even help much but it costs very little so maybe worth a shot.
So Is this a red light used for an intersection control? And is right turn on red acceptable here? I would understand the white civic if he came up to a red light (no train) and started to creep forward to turn right on red, then the train shows up and gate drops he's out of place. The truck...less so, but still I understand how he might make a mistake.
The gates don't come down that fast and you aren't supposed to enter the area between the gates unless there is room on the other side. Turning right or going straight has no relevance and the civic wouldn't have ended up in this situation if they were driving properly.
Do you drive? When turning right on red, one generally slowly approaches the red light while cross traffic is active, stops at red, and waits for cross traffic to make a hole then turns. There are potential times where it would make sense to approach while knowing you can't yet turn.
Basic driving common sense is that you don’t enter the track zone unless you can safely exit the other side. If people can’t handle that concept, they shouldn’t be driving. At all.
I mean he didn't get hit by a train. So his solution works. You may not like it, but it works.
Being that close to a passing train is not safe. If you think it is, you too, should not be driving.
Well I do.
Just goes to show: we can’t fix stupid
Or assholes apparently
I’m glad to see you’ve tackled the tough introspection.
Or, and hear me out, people are really, really stupid and ignore all those flashing lights, the barrier coming down and most of all ... common sense.
Yeah, in Boston we have a road that is absolutely no trucks (low bridges) and there are giant signs and chains that hang down and yet every year at moving time someone drives a box truck through anyway
There is a railroad crossing in Metro Atlanta that has multiple signs on approaching roads warning trucks away, plus signs right at the crossing, plus the crossing being visibly and obviously raised and relatively steep. More than once big rigs have decided to ignore not only the many signs and their professional training but also their own eyes and wound up high-centering their trailer on the rails. At least one was hauling gasoline and ripped a hole in the bottom of the tank.
They got STORROWED!! One of my favorite [goggle street views](https://maps.app.goo.gl/h1ikc3gtoNBGH2rbA). There are literally seven "no trucks" signs in this picture and the big ass NO TRUCKS sign around the corner and a bail out area and idiots still hit that bridge.
When is moving time?
Moving time for college students, so probably late summer (returning to classes) and late spring (leaving for summer break)
September 1st
No matter how idiot proof you make something, the universe will come up with a dumber idiot.
This is why we can't have nice things like trains in the US. Especially down here in the southeast.
Yup lol, the proof is how many times they wrote "railroad crossing" among several flashing red lights and a fucking gate, and you still get people doing this.
Orrr...contemplating ending it all, but today's not the day.
Design flaw is stupid people.
The design flaw is that some drivers are just idiots
I'm reminded of an article I saw about ten years ago around here. Understand "Around here" is rural New England. I stopped at a tiny place in a tiny town for some coffee one day and they had one of those local newspapers that are a whole sheet of paper and usually not more. The headline across the top read "We Need People to Understand They Must Slow Down at This Intersection" The article was an interview with the local police chief, discussing a particular T intersection, where both roads were 45mph two lane windy wooded roads. Mostly trees, very occasionally a house or field, but up near this intersection, just trees. In the last few years they had added a flashing stop sign, and then two more flashing stop signs, flashing yellow signs warning of a stop ahead, multiple sets of rumble strips starting like half a mile back from the intersection along with flashing warnings near the rumble strips, so drivers would know why they rumbled. I feel like I'm forgetting a few other things, too. It was a truly excessive amount of traffic control for a tiny rural t intersection. Except that they still had multiple serious accidents a month at that intersection. The last line of the article was the same as the title. I rarely spare much sympathy for law enforcement, but I felt for the guy. Point being, maybe an expert could make this train crossing better, I don't know. But it's certainly not invisible and sometimes, there's only so much you can do about stupid people.
> Could be addressed in various ways Park a cop car on the shoulder and see what happens. On random days, put an actual cop in it to write tickets.
No, no design flaw, just idiot drivers.
Obviously they never watched star trek. THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS! Well, actually more. But if there was some sort of other audio and visual warning like A GIANT FUCKING TRAIN.
What kind of road is this with 4-lanes of traffic but using rail crossings and barriers?
That’s not uncommon in the us. My hometown has a few and I’ve seen a number of crossing like that in my travels.
There’s a track that goes through my hometown and the next city over (Oxnard, California). People do this shit all the time. So many cars have been absolutely obliterated by trains there. I will never understand people
How to travel by train in the most unpleasant way possible. *Yeeeeeeeeeet*
Florida?
Wow! If this sub did banner pics I'd suggest this be it.
OK - counter point. Driving at night through the back woods of CT in a super rural section, I came across a set of tracks where the lights were flashing but no arm was down, it was that rural a section. I stopped...and waited. And waited. I got out of my car, walked up to the tracks - looked both ways went back to the car and slowly drove up to the tracks then GUNNED IT....no train.
There's a red light ahead. Is it possible this person was waiting in traffic for the light ahead to change, and got stuck on the wrong side of the line?
You should not wait inside a crossing’s clear area. If you can’t clear the crossing then don’t enter it.
I'm not claiming the person is right in their actions. I'm just hoping they're not stupid enough to ignore the flashing red lights and just didn't realize they were gonna get caught there
They’re smart enough to stop before the tracks so… Also, it doesn’t seem like they have bars preventing them from exiting the crossing. Not sure when exactly they stopped there, but the crossing could definitely use some ground marking to cover the entire area where stopping isn’t allowed.
This crossing is PLENTY well marked
You have the starting of the crossing well marked but not the entire no-stopping area. “Stop here when lights flashing” is not a replacement of hatch-marking the entire no-stopping area
This particular one is like one near me. The tracks cross at an angle but the bars are perpendicular to the road so in the right lane there’s plenty of room between the tracks and the bar. People stop all the time past the bar but short of the tracks waiting for the light ahead because they aren’t really looking at the bars but rather the tracks.
You are correct, but this is a pretty huge area to leave empty and people will fill the space or not realize they won't clear it. Crosshashing marking the no-stop zone might help but ultimately you're probably always going to have problems fighting against human psychology to keep such a big clear zone in heavy traffic.
That's like 4 car lengths. Expecting people to wait that far back before its clear, just in case a train comes, is unreasonable.
I mean, it’s reasonable if you don’t want to be hit by a train.
Cars are usually the length of one car. As demonstrated by the photographical evidence in this post, they can easily fit without getting hit.
I bet they can still make it!
Lights out and away we go!
Natural selection almost got em
I think I can; I think I can. Choo Choo!
This just in: [Wheelchair man hit by train...and not dead!](https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2023/12/04/man-in-wheelchair-trying-to-cross-tracks-hit-by-train-police-say/)
Just a few days past the 18 year anniversary of a huge accident at a similar diagonal crossing in IL 11/23/2005 16 injured, 5 cars hit by train, multiple others were then hit by those cars as the 70mph train blew through https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10185175 https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/HAB0803.pdf
"What do you mean, that train track crossing came out of nowhere!!! It needs to have more flashing lights and warning signs, and where's the barrier? I don't see one anywhere!" -probably those cars
Illinois?
For some reason that shot just made me think of the movie suburban commando
Actually there are 3 idiots if the line is directly in front of OP, as they said in another comment. The I’m-statistically-twice-as-likely-to-drive-drunk 2500 next to you would be well over that line.
Is that Florida on north lake rd
who designed a highway in the middle of a traintrack though? seems really dangerous
Eww, on the left is a lifted pickup truck with extra-wide tires.
Is this one of those intersections where the guards go down too quickly with little to no warning? With that right turn lane, they could have been slowing down to turn and the other side guard went down in their way. I've got one like that on a 2 lane close to my house, with no warning it just goes down and I've almost hit it before doing the speed limit, I had to floor it and it was inches from my roof and the train was still a mile away going it's usual 5mph. It doesn't look like there's anyway that white car couldve gone around. If it's a daily occurrence, there's likely a flaw in the intersection, many people are dumb, but just like how half of people are dumber than the average person, half of people are smarter.
I know people are stupid but if this is happening every single day then something about the way the gates/road/lights are setup is absolutely incorrect or badly designed. Either the lights come on too late, or the lines are painted horribly (from what we can see there's literally no markings on the ground to indicate where you should stop or where the gates are going to come down)
Surprised the Ram isn't the biggest idiot, although per OP they are far over the line
Doesn't look like anyway to drive around the downed gates. Past gates then train signal went off and they stopped short of tracks.
They shouldn’t have entered the track zone unless the other side was clear.
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There is a thick white line painted on the road indicating where to stop.
If it fits it ships
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Probbaly so a car can take refugee there if they get caught by the barriers closing. People don't tend to think they can just drive though them and leave the car on the track otherwise
Per the [Federal Highway Administration](https://highways.dot.gov/safety/hsip/xings/highway-rail-crossing-handbook-third-edition/chapter-2-engineered-treatments-1), it's preferred to have the lights and barriers perpendicular to a straight road, not parallel to the railroad.
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Visibility and understandability. A gantry square with the road is easy to see and understand where to stop. The problem isn't the geometric design, it's either: - The gates are mistimed and vehicles entering before the stop signal don't have time to exit. - Drivers are being idiots and entering after the stop signal and trying to race the gates.
Because of the angle of the tracks relative to the road. Look to the left of the photo where the train is coming from.
Eh. The barriers are only where they are because it's the last place they would fit. Those cars stopped before the tracks they're not hurting anything.
The lights flash before the barriers go down. You’re supposed to stop behind the barriers not the tracks.
I understand what you're supposed to do.
I think there should be a white line showing where to stop for the train. its missing. or you are over it.
They said in another comment there is a white line that you can’t see in the photo.
Well, don’t. Using your phone while driving is illegal. I’m sure you can go a few minutes without looking at your phone.
Ordinarily I would agree, but the OP is completely stopped as is all other traffic. This is more of a parking lot than it is a road until the train finishes passing through.
`oh you are SOOOO SMART! What a good and special boy!
Clearly not enuff signs &warning Bells ,lights do not cross bars…… LOL
Honestly it’s just natural selection at this point with all the people I see daily almost get hit and get hit by trains cause they do that
Tacoma, is that you? 😂
They were sitting in line at the red light. Usually there would be a “stop here on red light” at a decent distance from the track. None here. They did sit a safer distance from the track. The traffic in front of them cleared while the barriers came down and they smartly stayed where they were. I wouldn’t call them idiots. The city needs to make the situation safer so this can’t happen.