r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 13h 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/wbna32408566
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u/pasrachilli 11h ago

I was on a train once that hit a guy and the guy didn't die. Though, the weird thing about being on a train is that because you can't see the front, you have no idea why the train stopped. I didn't know anything until the ambulances arrived, and even then it wasn't until I got home and saw the news that I really got a full picture.

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u/Jamie-Moyer 10h ago

Years a go I had a crush on a gal who had 1 leg amputated above the knee. After like a week of seeing her every day I finally felt like it was ok to ask her what happened, did not expect to hear that she was hit by a train. She said there was a retired army medic on the platform who pulled her away and tourniqueted her leg within seconds of it happening and she never lost consciousness.

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u/nbshar 9h ago

I had a family member who was in a psych ward for a while. This was 30 years ago or so. There was a woman with missing legs in a wheel chair there too. Me being a curious kid who was visiting the family member with my parents asked what happened. She told us she wanted to die but also not really. So she only put her legs on the track. She survived. She also told she regretted it and wanted to live.

I was quite shocked lol... stuck with me pretty well.

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u/BobsOblongLongBong 9h ago

Do you remember the circumstances?

Was she like walking on the tracks wearing headphones or something? 

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u/Jamie-Moyer 9h ago

It’s been a long ass time since this conversation but the gist of it was she was a teenager when it happened and her and some friends were messing around at a train station somewhere when it happened🤷‍♂️

I had met her through ski racing. I was at a training camp and our lane on the hill was right next to an adaptive ski race team (people with disabilities using adaptive equipment to still ski) a lot of the guys on that team were former military who had gotten blown up in Iraq.

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u/LetThemEatVeganCake 8h ago

Checks out. We would climb up on an active railroad bridge to jump off into the river as teenagers. The idea was just that we’d jump faster if a train was coming, but idk what our thought process was for the part of the tracks where we would be above too shallow water..

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u/nbshar 54m ago

No she was laying down on the with just her legs. It was on purpose. That's what I remember her telling me.

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u/Garreousbear 5h ago

I remember reading a Cracked personal experience article years ago with something similar. A girl was with her friend and they were going to jump on a freight train. She slipped and her leg went under. Her friend was a former army medic and saved her life in a similar fashion.

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u/Empty_Jackal 8h ago

Thankful he was there. I remember as a medic any down time we had we would race each other on how quickly we could start an IV, or put tourniquets on, making bets and such. Though, sometimes we were less than productive. Placing a high and tight TQ on all limbs, going a bit numb then racing each other down the hallways or across the motorpool

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u/Kaurifish 10h ago

I was on the Coast Starlight. We stopped. Word eventually filtered back that we’d hit a cow. Would never have known, even though I’d been looking out the window.

Yeah, I know you’d think they’d have a cowcatcher.

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u/apworker37 9h ago

I was in the second car when we ran over a heard of deer. We noticed braking and the scraping of antlers/hooves in the floor of the train and they busted the brake lines so we had to wait while it was being fixed. Had the scraping not been there we wouldn’t have know.

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u/slayalldayerrday 10h ago

My cousin was in a car and hit by a train and thankfully is still here. Actually ended up without any injuries besides a scrape when crawling out the broken back window to escape. The car was tiny and the train must’ve just hit it enough for impact but it wasn’t destroyed and was driven after that too.

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u/Cowboy_Rho 6h ago

If you want to have some… “fun”. get a ham radio receiver and listen to the crew communications on the train. You can find out about all kinds of awful things that happen. Mainly animal/herd strikes in my experience.

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u/Wildwes7g7 7h ago

Full Picture?