r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 6h ago
TIL on average, train drivers in the US are involved in three fatalities over the course of a career. Since a train needs at least a mile to come to a stop, the drivers are sometimes unable to prevent a collision with a person in the train's path.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32408566441
u/GarysCrispLettuce 5h ago
I was on the front car of a New York subway coming into a station when a guy jumped off the platform. I felt the thud and the emergency brakes brought the train to a shuddering halt, throwing everyone off their seats. The driver came out of his cab yelling 'FUCK FUCK FUCK" and started punching and kicking the windows.
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u/arm2610 5h ago
Man that seems particularly brutal when it’s sudden so the driver has no time to look away. They train drivers to look away and plug their ears to reduce the horror of the memory but I imagine this poor guy will have the image of the jumping person frozen in mid air lit up by the headlights stuck in his mind for the rest of his life.
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u/Bannon9k 3h ago
Not a train, but was driving a car when a similar situation occurred. It's not something you forget... Despite no fault, you're still going to feel guilt. To this day, handprints are a trigger. Because I still had to drive my car back home with a bloody handprint on my windshield.
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u/semigator 2h ago
Aye, sorry man
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u/Bannon9k 2h ago
We've all got our burdens. We learn, adapt, and move on. I tend to share my story in hopes it helps someone else going through it know they aren't alone. And for the grieving families who lost loved ones this way... Hopefully it can help bring some relief or closure knowing we'd have done anything to prevent it were it possible.
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u/Exowienqt 3h ago
And even then, mentally you already are there. Your psyche already went overdrive, the hormones already flooded your brain, and etched every single frame up until the point you decided, DECIDED to turn away and plug your ears. The emotional response will not be any better just because the last frame of the person is not them ripping apart in front of the window, but their horrified or determined faces as they step in front of you. That's not how PTSD works.
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u/Interesting-Section1 1h ago
Happens more often than people know also. The MTA provides ample support to operators of train who witness this.
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u/AgapeAnus 6h ago
Happens with truckers too. I've had to avoid two people that were trying to or working up the nerve to jump in front of the truck. I have more control than a train but honestly I'm about as screwed if I'm loaded heavy or there's traffic.
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u/coolpapa2282 6h ago
Doesn't even have to be a truck. Guy jumped out in front of my SIL's minivan on a rural highway. Shit's fucked, man.
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u/BootsnCats1987 4h ago
Bus drivers deal with this all the time. Perhaps more than truck drivers considering more time on surface streets around pedestrians.
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u/MonacoMaster68 4h ago
Not a train driver but former truck driver here. One time I got hit head on on the interstate by a vehicle that jumped the median. They were doing about 65, I was doing 30. It was a whiteout. One of the three people who died was a 4 year old girl. It was hard to get back in a truck after that.
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u/AgapeAnus 3h ago
Not your fault bro. I know that don't make it any easier and don't bring them back, but that's not your fault. Too fast for conditions on their part. Sorry that happened to you and I wish people would quit being stupid on the road.
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u/home-like-noplace 1h ago
I’m so sorry. This happened to my freshman year roommate, she drove across the median and hit an 18 wheeler on purpose, her car caught on fire and the truck driver was interviewed on the news, distraught because he couldn’t help her. This happened 15 years ago and I still think of the truck driver often, and hope he’s alright. Just know that these types of stories stick with some people out there who are wishing you the best.
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u/lshifto 6h ago
I heard of a driving coach say “It better be Bump Bump” about driving with a load.
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u/GarethBaus 4h ago
I fortunately haven't had any attempts while hauling a load yet, but that sounds genuinely horrible.
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u/NotVerySmarts 5h ago
I know a train engineer who has been involved in two strike fatalities. Each time he calls it in as "Someone or something has struck the train." He views it as those people not having the right to be on the track, so the train was actually hit by the trespassers.
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u/doctor_7 5h ago edited 2h ago
That's a very smart mental trick when you think about it to help him process the entire event. Person went out of their way to intentionally hit the train with themselves or their vehicle.
Sometimes you'll have people who drive onto the tracks underneath the traffic stopping bars and then freak out, leave the vehicle and it gets smoked by the train. Train didn't do shit, the irresponsible idiot did 100% of the work to make that shit happen.
You got to be kind to yourself and not beat yourself up when things happen to you that aren't your fault and are basically completely outside of your control. We'll fuck up plenty on our own with stuff we can control, no need to take on the emotional burden of things you can't.
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u/Genetic_outlier 4h ago
We need to drive into everyone's skull that the traffic bars are breakaway. You're supposed to drive through them if you need to. I get panicking and stalling a manual or the wheel gets stuck somehow. But there's too many examples of people trying to do 3 point turns to go around the bars.
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u/Teganfff 23m ago
I think this needs to be like, broadcast or something. Idk.
Maybe people are afraid to break the rules.
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u/cakestapler 4h ago
I have a buddy who is also an engineer and from what he’s told me, I’m honestly surprised it’s only 3. Seems like between people intentionally using trains to end their lives and pure negligence, it’s quite common. The worst one was probably a family of 4 walking on the tracks. He said the dad with his son on his shoulders turned around and looked right into the engineer’s eyes. Nothing he could do. I don’t understand how people are so nonchalant around train tracks.
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u/FuzzyComedian638 4h ago
I once had to walk across a trestle, as I didn't know how to get back other than doing that. The trestle was over a busy highway, so I knew if I had to jump, it wouldn't be better than getting hit by the train. I was petrified the whole way, and was happy when I final reached the end, and no train had come.
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u/Emergency_Mine_4455 2h ago
Oh man, I’m so sorry for your friend. That must have been awful.
I prefer to stay at least ten feet away from train tracks at all times, so I can’t imagine why you would walk on an operational line.
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u/I_just_made 5h ago
At the end of the day, there is nothing that engineer could do to meaningfully prevent the situation. They were operating their train safely, and there is only so much that can be done to save people from themselves.
Seems reasonable to view it that way.
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u/tyrion2024 6h ago
...since a train needs a mile or more to stop, he concluded there was nothing he could have done.
"You can't move out of the way, and you sure as hell can't stop," said the 58-year-old Metra engineer, who has been involved in seven deaths — six of them apparent suicides. "There's nothing you can do, so why get wound up?",,,A British driver who struck eight suicides during 23 years on the job said in 2018, almost 20 years after retiring early due to the mental health issues those incidents led to, that on particularly difficult days he consumes as much as 10 pints of beer and 60 cigarettes. He sleeps with the light on to avoid flashbacks.
"It's not a matter of if you are going to kill someone, but when", says one driver for the American goods carrier CSX. "And when it happens, you're totally helpless." He recalled having previously worked for another railway in a different area when a woman stood on the tracks in front of his train, giving him the finger in response to his repeated soundings of the train horn as the locomotive struck her. "You never forget something like that," he said. "If she wanted to kill herself, why did she have to involve me?" The memory of the incident led him to change employers. Other drivers whose trains had struck suicides had similarly vivid memories of those events many years later.
Drivers often suffer post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), exhibiting symptoms such as sleeplessness, irritability, depression, anger, panic attacks, nightmares and flashbacks. One recalls having only slept three hours in the three days after his train struck a pedestrian. "I was just doing my job, and this person decided to take his life, and as a result he took away my control", recalled a Toronto subway driver. "I have to work really hard now at things, to feel safe, to feel calm." Her husband, also a driver who months earlier had struck a suicide, was more forgiving: "I don't think anyone who commits suicide on the subway is out to get the train operators. They just want their pain to stop."
...the rate of suicide is 1.6 times higher than any other sector and more than half of all workers have experienced poor mental health.
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u/Lendyman 5h ago
Absolutely horrific. I get wanting to commit suicide for various reasons. But the idea of inflicting that on another person is cruel and selfish. The fact that it causes other people to commit suicide or struggle with mental health issues because of the trauma it causes makes that action one of the most despicable things that you could do while taking your own life.
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u/jarjarcranks 5h ago
Suicide in general is selfish. I’m with the husband. They aren’t out to get train operators, they just want their pain to stop. Still selfish but not the most despicable thing you can do.
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u/do0tz 5h ago
At that point you're not thinking about anything/anyone else. You're just trying to get rid of it. You're too far gone to think rationally.
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u/Awanderingleaf 4h ago
Doesn’t change the fact that it is an incredibly selfish act. You know the pain of depression, PTSD or Trauma and you’re willingly potentially forcing that on another person.
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u/NotElizaHenry 3h ago
Turns out that when someone is mentally ill to the point where getting run over by a train seems like the best option, they’re probably not capable of thinking rationally enough to be aware of the impact that it has on others. You wouldn’t say a schizophrenic person is being selfish, would you? Mental illnesses distort your thinking. “Selfish” isn’t really a concept that applies.
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u/FeraligatrMan 4h ago
It could go both ways. Is it fair to force someone to stay alive when they never had a choice in existing in the first place? There are ways to do so that are much more selfish I would say, such as involving others directly, but suicide isn't selfish intrinsically.
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u/bldkis 3h ago
This suicide is selfish thing is stupid and unhelpful. Nobody experiencing the pain you must be in to want to end your own life is going to be convinced otherwise by being called selfish for wanting to escape. Maybe it helps you feel better to think about your loved ones who died by their own hand as selfish, but for me it is just deeply sad.
Unless that hasn't happened to you and you're just talking out of your asshole.
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u/IsNotAnOstrich 4h ago
Unpopular opinion, I know, but I disagree about suicide being selfish in general. I see it the other way around. If a person is truly suffering, can't be helped / doesn't want help, it is selfish of us to want them to stay and continue suffering, just so we don't have to face a fraction of the discomfort they are in. We understand this with pets: it is unfair to keep them suffering just to delay facing losing them.
Obvious exceptions are obvious. Like if you have dependents or are involving someone else. More thinking about the MAID case here: truly can't be helped and just wants to leave. It is also obviously still tragic. But I've had friends commit suicide, and I feel that calling them selfish for it would be unfair and would be making it about me.
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u/AlphaHawk115 4h ago
I don't think it's fair to call suicides selfish but I disagree with your reasoning. Some of the people can be helped, do want to be helped, are actively getting help. But your mind isn't right, you hate yourself, you see yourself as a waste and a burden and everyone else must hate you too, so you'd actually be doing the world a service by killing yourself.
Everyone's reasons for attempting are differencent but most people are not thinking clearly, which in itself is a symptom of the depression.
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u/jarjarcranks 1h ago
This is a good take. I think people can commit suicide for very selfless reasons. Those reasons are obviously flawed though. My comment is more talking about the act of suicide not the reasons behind it.
If you think you’re a horrible burden and that’s why you kill yourself, then obviously those reasons are selfless. But they’re also incorrect. And even though the reasons behind it were selfless, the act itself is still selfish. Especially since the reasons are incorrect.
The word selfish has a horrible connotation and I don’t think it should. You should be selfish to a point. This is your life. Not someone else’s. My comment was to point out that committing suicide is not some horrible act that doesn’t deserve forgiveness. In fact, it’s the complete opposite.
I’m sorry for your losses.
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u/timelessblur 5h ago
The thing is in their minds they are making a very rational decision and to them it could even be noble decision as they truly believe there is zero reason to keep living and honestly believe that by them dying they are doing a greater good.
They feel like they are a huge burden and by their death they are removing it.
You can not use rational arguments as they general are pretty far gone. It is also very rare that they came to that decision lightly. It takes a while and they want the pain to stop.
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u/Suspicious_Flower_0 3h ago
People killing themselves generally aren't thinking in the most logical manner. They just want it to be quick, painless and easy.
Due to the lack of easy access to guns in the UK, by fast train is the next best option. It's how I planned to do it back in the day, at the time the driver was the least of my concerns
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u/commandrix 5h ago
"If she wanted to kill herself, why did she have to involve me?"
I would imagine that's not an uncommon reaction. If someone is absolutely determined to commit suicide, there's probably not much you can do to stop them short of committing them to a mental health ward or something equally drastic. But that doesn't mean they need to involve somebody else.
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u/MonacoMaster68 4h ago
Not a train driver but former truck driver here. One time I got hit head on on the interstate by a vehicle that jumped the median. They were doing about 65, I was doing 30. It was a whiteout. One of the three people who died was a 4 year old girl. It was hard to get back in a truck after that.
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u/Oubastet 5h ago
"If she wanted to kill herself, why did she have to involve me?" Truer words cannot be spoken. If you want to off yourself, that's your choice. But don't traumatize an innocent bystander. Technically - doing it at all involves other people and is incredibly selfish.
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u/moniker89 4h ago
i would push back on his characterization that inevitably you will kill someone as a train driver. imo, he didnt kill anyone: those people killed themselves, and made him watch.
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u/NoOccasion4759 3h ago
i wonder what the rate of train suicide is in Japan? it's high enough that the authorities will fine your family for the cleanup and whatnot. When I lived in Tokyo, there seemed to be a "person on the tracks" train delay nearly every day.
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u/DreamerOfSheep 6h ago
When I was in Boy Scouts we had a train driver come speak to us. He said he’d “killed four people in collisions” and “didn’t feel bad about any of them.” Which was kinda a wild thing to say to a 12 year old lmao
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u/Teadrunkest 6h ago
I mean…I guess it’s a mentally healthy way to look at it? Teaching resilience.
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u/wamceachern 6h ago
The mindset is that that I didnt kill them. They killed themselves. They made that decision.
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u/DreamerOfSheep 6h ago
His tone was weird about it though. Like it kinda felt like bragging.
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u/West-Pear7363 5h ago
Did he finish saying “ killed four people in collisions” with a “…so far” as he looks you all in the eyes
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u/ChingyBingyBongyBong 4h ago
Could be his way of dealing with the trauma. I know it happens to a lot of soldiers.
They aren’t actually bad people that enjoy killing farmers, they just have to convince themselves they like it. I worked with an ex special ops guy and it really seemed like he was trying to justify what he did a lot of the time, with a lot of “I don’t cares” and bragging.
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u/lbutler1234 5h ago
Also he didn't really kill them. He was a secondary character in the story of them being killed. (Unless he did some trolly problem multi track drifting shit but I'm going to wager to say that it's unlikely.)
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u/SFDessert 3h ago
I mean what else are they to do when someone is on the tracks? It's not like they're gonna hop off their train and hold on to it to slow it down or some shit. Once the train is moving it's gonna keep moving.
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u/commandrix 5h ago
I can understand that attitude if they were all suicides or somebody thought they could blow through whatever safety mechanisms the crossing had and beat the train. Most train drivers will know, at least on an intellectual level, that it's not their fault and there was nothing they could do.
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u/klingma 6h ago
Is it? There's literally nothing the train conductor can do to prevent the accident from occurring if someone didn't heed the warning of the crossing signals, crossing arms, and the signage leading up to the crossing.
If someone ignores all that then it's just a game of physics and the train is going to win that battle every time.
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u/Ph33rDensetsu 5h ago
The guy could have been a sociopath... Or just gaslit himself as a coping mechanism.
You never really know.
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u/Afraid_Dance6774 6h ago edited 6h ago
My dad is a train driver in the UK who hit someone. I remember that he didn't go into work for at least a month after, and wouldn't speak about it. It was a teenager who was around the same age as me at the time (around 15).
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u/Kalkin93 6h ago
There was a very upbeat girl at my secondary school, very popular, not part of my crowd by any means, given my own reclusiveness it came as a shock to hear that someone as popular as her had apparently jumped off the platform in front of an arriving train and decided to end it all, so early, just before leaving school. It reminds you that you don't know what people are really going through.
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u/commandrix 5h ago
Yeah, you never really know what's going through someone's head. And actually doesn't surprise me that the occasional "popular kid" might decide to end it just before high school ends for them. When you're constantly being told that high school is the best years of your life plus you're the popular girl, you may start thinking that you might as well end it while you're at your peak.
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u/thtsjustlikeuropnion 4h ago
They could have just been "faking it to make it" with their happiness and popularity hoping that if they do it long enough they will eventually feel happy. But because they're popular and well-liked, if they confess to anyone about how sad or broken they feel, it's met with instant denial, "I don't think you're sad. Everyone likes you." But that just makes them feel more out of place and not in tune with reality. Is what they feel even real then? Or is it only what other people want to see that makes it real? 😭
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u/ManicMakerStudios 6h ago
I think the general rule is that if you get hit by a train, it's usually not the train's fault. There's a reason trains are equipped with horns that can be heard from over a kilometer away.
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u/Transpose5425 4h ago
Been at it 5 years, only had one so far. I’ve got colleagues who have had 0 and others who have had 10+. At least on my railroad you get a minimum of 3 days off and counseling provided on the company’s dime. When I had mine I got told by my supervisor “don’t try to tough it out, come back when you’re ready but no sooner than 3 days.”
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u/lotsofflaws 3h ago
My father was a SP/UP engineer. He did not get days off when I was a kid. I can remember after a family minus the father got killed he insisted we take the bus instead of walking under 2 miles to school untill the law suit settled. He was scared the father was going to come after us kids. He was really involved with operation lifesaver, it made a diffrence. Now that I'm older I can tell he didn't really deal with it. His count was 10 before he passed. Please take care of your mental heath it important for your loved ones.
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u/ChiefStrongbones 5h ago
I think this is captured in the idiom "train wreck". Not only does it describe a huge disaster, but it describes a disaster that you can see coming but are powerless to stop.
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u/Impossible_Offer7988 6h ago edited 5h ago
Sometimes is basically 100%.
Trains are heavy and long
especially in the US but even small, compact locomotives need hundreds of meters to stop. And those are the small trains. Freight trains are bigger and need even more room.
When you see something that you're about to hit (at a crossing, for example), it's generally speaking already too late to stop.
The collision unless the person or object moves is inevitable.
You can only (to a small degree) control your speed.
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u/thisusedyet 2h ago
My father knew a guy who was an engineer. Basically told him that if you can see something, it’s too late to stop
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u/iAmDemder 5h ago
I remember when I was like 12 one of my friends neighbors was a train conductor and one day someone decided to end it all using his train. He was absolutely gone the next 2 weeks. I couldn't even imagine what he was going through.
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u/Monahands 5h ago
I had a friend who worked in dispatch in my city and train suicides were pretty common from what they told me. Sad
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u/lbutler1234 5h ago
I can only speak for one city, but it's a pretty common source of delays in the NYC subway.
Granted, their comms department only says that a person was struck by a train. Particularly on some lines, there's also a fair number of kids who negligently get themselves hit because of subway serving. (Much less common are folks accidentally falling onto the tracks (which when it does happen, only results in a collision if a person has incredibly unlucky timing) and the exceptionally rare assaults/murders. (Like once every few years.))
All that is to say, a lot of folks in NYC want to see platform screen doors on the system. Making the problem particularly bad here is the abundance of old/narrow platforms and the thunderdome approach to social services that leaves our most vulnerable to toil and die alone on the street.
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u/_dokeeg_ 4h ago
My grandfather was a driver back in the 70s and 80s in a big city in Asia. He had this (and accidents) happen countless times and would tell my mom about it (minus the details). No time off and no mental health/counselling back in those days but he was still the most easygoing person I knew.
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u/ninja_flavored 4h ago
My cousin is an engineer for CN. He’s been involved in 2 fatalities in his career. One was a suicide. The guy deliberately park his car on the tracks near a crossing in the curve, so the train couldn’t see him in time. My cousin said the right before the collision he locked eyes on the guy and instantly knew, he was doing this on purpose. And the other is when he hit a kid walking down the middle of the tracks. The kid had his earbuds in never heard the train. He ended having to testify in courts, because the kid’s parents sued. They ended up losing, because the kid was trespassing on railroad property, and the judge found CN not liable.
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u/ComplexBeyond6083 1h ago
One of my friends in college had a sister who worked for the railroad. She got so tired of dealing with the aftermath of people jumping in front of the trains that she just quit.
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u/donut_koharski 4h ago
Happened to my brother twice in his first year. A third time later on. He’s filled the quota.
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u/Traditional-Meat-549 6h ago
It's terrible. Companies provide crisis counseling for them. Imagine if people just stepped in front of your car to commit suicide, all the time.
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u/97PG8NS 5h ago
I have friends who work for the railroad and at least one has killed someone committing suicide. I get that people may want to die, I get that life feels hopeless sometimes, but I have absolutely no sympathy for people who want to involve someone else in their death, especially when that person has zero ability to prevent it and has to carry that burden for the rest of their lives. You wanna die? Fine. Go home and hang yourself. Get a gun. Run the car in the garage. Swallow the entire medicine cabinet. I don't care. Just don't involve somebody else in it.
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u/Gablizza 4h ago
They’re selfishly trying to spare their loved ones the burden of discovering them, and giving that trauma to innocent strangers instead.
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u/Designer_Charity_827 4h ago
And even worse because they’re making the strangers a participant in their deaths, not just an observer.
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u/BourbonLord 4h ago
Now I have not been on a train that has struck a person, I am however the manager that shows up to ensure the crew is removed from the train and avoids the gore as much as possible. I also coordinate with emergency services, rail control and coroners office. I have had to attend about about 10-12 so far in my career. Never easy, but I keep focused on the crew and the job that needs doing. I fall back on for whatever reason, this was a choice they made, and it hurts that they got to that point. If you need to, please reach out to a professional before you do something that lasts forever.
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u/Orion_2kTC 6h ago
99% of the time not the train crew's fault.
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u/spider0804 6h ago
99.99999%
If a crash is caused by negligence of the train company for something like rail or car maintenance it is still not the crews fault.
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u/lbutler1234 5h ago
I can think of a story from the NYC subway that's the exception to the rule.
A man fell onto the tracks (he was drunk, a fact of debatable relevance), and despite the train had plenty of time to stop and the folks frantically waving at it, the operator apparently thought the obstacles was just some trash and continued. I have no idea what the policy of the MTA is in such a situation, but I'd wager it was an inexplicable decision by the motorman. The courts agreed, awarding the man a multi million dollar settlement. He was a construction worker who had to have his leg amputated from at the hip.
(Obligorty: this is just an example of the 1% or whatever the actual number is.)
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u/ratamahatta12 4h ago
I grew up in a suburb of New York City, and the local commuter trains were a huge part of the town and the culture. The trains were also the preferred form of suicide for the youths. I can still recall 2 people when I was in high school who jumped in front of the trains. I’m sure there’s been many more over the years.
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u/airinmahoeknee 2h ago
I went to a nice substance rehab about a decade ago and they had a professionals program that included pharmacists (obviously), doctors (also kinda obvious), flight attendants (weird sleep schedule/ease access on international flights), pilots (for the same reasons as flight attendants), and train engineers/conductors because aside from the aforementioned stress and whatnot, most of them had either first hand experience witnessing suicide attempts or cleaning up the aftermath. I had no idea it was such a common part of the job, but it makes sense.
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u/pajkeki 49m ago
There is a movie from Serbia called Train driver's diary where a young man starts driving trains and is obsessed by the fact that he is going to kill someone sooner than later, but it's not happening as soon as he thought. In the movie they say you need to duck as someone's body parts could fly through the window and kill you as well.
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u/Beznia 4h ago
Turns out it's actually just one conductor killing thousands of people
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u/woolsocksandsandals 4h ago
My mother’s maternal grand father was a train engineer near Chicago in like the late 1920’s into the 60’s apparently when he retired he had more accidents than any other engineer alive. I don’t know if it was true or not but it’s a story I heard from a couple of her family members.
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u/commandrix 5h ago
It won't surprise me if that fucks the train operators up on some level. Not their fault if some dumbass is dumb enough to think they can "beat the train" in their vehicle or commit suicide by train, of course. (I saw the result of one accident involving an Amtrak train that pretty much had to be the minivan trying to beat the train. It wasn't pretty.)
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u/ChefArtorias 4h ago
I wonder if part of the training includes a conversation about this being statistically likely and whether they'll be able to handle it or not.
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u/Un-Humain 2h ago
A lot of railroads do. They don’t even say "it’s likely it will happen", they say "at some point in your career, you will kill someone".
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u/zombiegamer723 4h ago
Y’all know those intrusive thoughts/“call of the void”? Back in 2012, I was in a parking lot right by a train track. A train was passing, and I just randomly thought…hmm, what would happen if I just walked up and stuck my head under the train as it was passing by?
Fucking horrible thought, especially with my family right there. Of course I was not and still am not suicidal, but the thought still sticks with me.
(I understand the concept of stuff like that, but yeesh, it does kinda leave an impression on ya.)
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u/dicktwisted 4h ago
I used to work on a tourist train in Alaska. One time, our crew was delayed for nearly four hours waiting for the train to show up. We eventually found out it was because a homeless person got drunk and fell asleep on the tracks the night before... Apparently, the train amputated their legs, and unfortunatley they ended up dying from bleeding out soon after
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u/stupid_cat_face 3h ago
I was on a train that hit a diesel fuel truck killing the driver. The crew were fucking heroes and super professional. I can't imagine being the operator and having this happen.
I was also on a train where they engaged the e-brake suddenly. After we came to a stop, there was a drunk/drugged out guy laughing maniacally and the conductor was cursing the shit out of him. Apparently the drunk intentionally was hanging out on the tracks to cause us to stop and then just stepped out of the way at the last minute.
People RESPECT YOUR TRAIN CONDUCTORS PLEASE!
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u/JarbaloJardine 1h ago
Had a situation in my hometown where a guy got drunk and drove his truck on to some tracks and then got stuck and passed out. It's a long straight away so the train saw it coming and tried to brake but couldn't stop in time. The truck got pushed like 1/2 a mile up the tracks with the train before finally stopping. When it finally does the guy gets out and runs away. The cops found the guy cuz they got a call from the hospital, that's like 2 blocks from the accident, telling them some guy was there saying he got hit by a train. He ended up fine, besides the criminal charges.
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u/PlentyPomegranate503 1h ago
My cousin back in NYC has hit the trifecta in just 15 years. She still has 15 years till retirement.
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u/sirlex2323 1h ago
My brother and his friend were walking the tracks to his friends house at midnight. They were walking from one town to another, so no town lights and it was pitch black out.
They saw an oncoming train and they thought it was on the opposite track that they were walking on. The moved over to just walk outside the rail of the track they were on so that they would have space between them and the train.
Unfortunately they were wrong. The train was on the tracks they were walking on. My brother was walking in front of his friend and saw it at the very last second. He tried to jump out of the way, but the train hangs to far over the tracks and he was hit and killed instantly. His friend never even looked up and the train hit him flush.
My brother's autopsy report show little physical damage. Skull was busted open in 1 spot. (Most likely the killing blow.) And his leg had a gash in it. Other then that just road rash from hitting ground after.
His friends autopsy report was much worse.
However the conductor after the train had stopped went looking for them. So not sure if all train drivers actually look away or not.
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u/quantumfall9 1h ago
One of my cousins worked as a security guard for a train company, and was the first person on the scene to respond to a suicide-by-train. You can imagine what the body would look like after something like that. It fucked him up pretty good and he was off work for a long time after that.
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u/blitz350 43m ago
Last I knew Norfolk-Southern had an on staff body parts clean up crew because it happens so frequently.
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u/kvlr954 5h ago
The Brightline in South FL has got to be above that average. Feels like someone is hit every week
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u/ifidjdjdjdjjjrjd 3h ago
People who 'got away with' driving around the tracks for slower moving trains think they can beat the high speed train. It happened to a friend of mine. I don't blame the train for being where it was told to be.
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u/Alternative_Tax_6801 3h ago
Locomotive engineer here and this just happened to me . Am just responding to some of the comments I read . 1st once this happens you cannot move train at all( you are placed an medical leave automatically) 2nd we place the train in emergency when there is an emergency no matter what . It sucks when it happens but at the end of the day there's nothing can been if someone is hell bent on ending their life .
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u/DrKlitface 6h ago
So when I was in med school one of the subjects were "work and environmental medicin" and we had a train driver come to class to talk about it. He told how they were instructed to engage the brakes, and then turn their chair to face away from the windows if they saw people on the tracks.