Train Hits Car at South McDonough, Man Taken to Hospital
Decatur Metro | February 17, 2012Lots of tweets about this today. From Decatur PD…
The Decatur Police Department is investigating a traffic accident involving a passenger vehicle and a train. The collision occurred on the South McDonough railroad crossing. The train struck the rear portion of the motor vehicle.
The driver of the vehicle, a 76 year old male was transported to a local hospital due to a complaint of injury. The driver was examined on scene by members of the Decatur Fire Department. A female juvenile passenger of the vehicle was not injured.
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Glad it ended as well as it did.
This was a frightening incident. Thank you for the reliable facts, DM. I see it a lot at that intersection, people stopped on the tracks, or just past the tracks, probably thinking they are clear. I’m happy there were no deaths.
Like the fellow with the big rims who, when I stopped short of the tracks a month or so ago, proceeded to drive around and get in front of me, stopping directly on the tracks.
So glad the texts from kids were wrong yesterday. Thanks for the good news.
So glad that everyone is ok. I hate to see cars stopped on those (or any) tracks. I pass through that intersection multiple times a day and more often than not, cars are either parked on the tracks or honking because the car in front of them has stopped not on the tracks and they want the car to move forward. The lines in the street telling you where to stop are there for a reason.
Thanks to gory stories from my Mom about train-car collisions in the day when a lot more ground level RR crossings existed, I have always been cautious around crossings. I even stop, open a window, and look and listen when the warning signal is off. But it’s hard to be cautious when you are holding up the whole intersection and folks are honking. I know it would be an act of God to change our ground level crossings to be safer for both pedestrians and vehicles, but I can always hope….. Given the fall in power of many an other institution, will the railroads ever lose their absolute control of the space around their tracks?
Or will there ever be an app for that? Do current GPS devices have the ability to warn of oncoming trains?
To be fair, the major risk of train-car accidents, according to a friend who seems to know the data, is drunk young men in rural areas at night who run right into the side of moving trains at crossings that have just a sign reminder of RR tracks, not an actual lights and sound signal.
The crossings in Decatur could be grade separated at a cost of $1M to $2M each. None of that would come from the railroad.
At present there is no way to signal a GPS about an oncoming train because there is nothing broadcast to anything. Future technology may make that possible, but that is a ways off.
As for the railroads having control of the space, the right-of-way is their private property and, subject to laws and regulations, they can do what they wish. Roads crossing their property are by way of easements granted by them. Other things, like people crossing the tracks at places other than crossings and walking on the tracks, are trespassing.
About 300 people a year are killed in vehicle/train incidents each year and that number has been decreasing steadily. For trespassers, the figure is nearer 600 and growing. Check out http://www.oli.org.
That’s an interesting website, Steve, and certainly unsettling with the headline, “About every 3 hours a person or vehicle is hit by a train.” Obviously, even a single incident is one too many but, that said, any discussion of investing millions of dollars in grade separation to address the issue should keep in mind that a person or car in the U.S. is hit by *a car* every 5 seconds. So, given that we don’t have bottomless pockets of cash, we need to keep a focus on priorities.
Again, even one injury or fatality is too many but, given the scope of the problem, it’s clear we should be investing what resources we do have in educating people how to be safe around railroads, not destroying our neighborhoods with massive new infrastructure. (Not saying you’re advocating any such things, mind you. Just chiming in with the point.)
“it’s clear we should be investing what resources we do have in educating people how to be safe around railroads”
+1 – that’s what Operation Lifesaver is all about.
So what’s the Reader’s Digest version? I’m thinking something like:
1. Stop vehicle at all RR tracks, open window, and listen and look before crossing, even if no warning signal is flashing/clanging.
2. If warning signal is activated, do not attempt to cross the tracks with vehicle, even if the train is far away.
3. Do not walk on or across tracks except at official crossings.
4. If vehicle is stuck on tracks and train is coming, abandon vehicle immediately and run to safety.
Thank you for sharing the link to http://www.oli.org. Very important safety lessons. I grew up in the Midwest surrounded by RR crossings, and have a healthy respect for them. The poster of the trestle should be posted near the Sage Hill trestle and in the NC mountains.
Also, if you have never been to the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay WI, it is worth a visit.
There were (and still are) only grade crossings in the small town where I grew up. Once the training wheels came off your bicycle and you gained the freedom to roam more than a block away (for us, about 3rd grade), you quickly learned how to ride over the RR track without letting your wheel turn and catch in the crack, because it would make you fall off the bicycle and skin your knee (and get left behind). We rode everywhere–on streets, dirt roads, gravel, across the playground, through the woods–so the RR track was just another kind of ground surface to learn how to navigate. Don’t remember much worry or caution about getting run over by a train at that point–guess we all knew (and our parents assumed) we’d have enough gumption to abandon the bicycle (our most cherished possession at that age) and get out of the way if a train came. It was when we started driving cars that the grown-ups really hauled out the gory stories. At that point, a major component of my parents’ strategy was to make us dread dying of stupidity, by convincing us that is what losing a race with a train would amount to.
Oh sure, blame the drunk young men. I would be offended if I was still young!
I regularly see folks trying to “beat” the arms coming down, stopped on the tracks and even trying to drive around the arms because clearly whatever they are in such a hurry to get to is more important than arriving alive. Just another example of the “it won’t happen to me” mentality. Good luck with that. The train WILL win.
See comment on Decatur Patch from woman who didn’t even hear warning signals and was oblivious until train was passing right behind her car. That’s affirmation that one should never stop on the tracks regardless of road rage around you. But also evidence that it’s not just impatient morons who find track warnings less than obvious.
Maybe this should be another Decatur 101 topic for the Decatur Focus or other venues? The tracks are a part of daily life, especially now that families/students cross them five of our eight schools if I’m counting correctly.
I never did like that band.
I’m trying, but getting nowhere.
Even without a train coming, that has always been an awkward intersection prone to congestion. Combine that with oncoming trains. Wasn’t this the same intersection where a truck was hit a few years ago?
I’d like to see Decatur develop a comprehensive traffic plan – the downtown layout doesn’t lend itself to flow. Consider making certain streets one-way in/out/within the downtown area – including the track crossings. For example, Candler one-way north and McDonough one-way south between square and the tracks.
After visiting relatives over the holidays in rural VA, we were headed to the airport at 4 am when we came across an interesting scene at a railroad crossing. There were a few young guys, standing around, scratching their heads while looking at a car that had gotten stuck on the tracks. The car was running in the same direction as the tracks, like they’d tried to drive on the tracks. Me thinks there was alcohol involved in this situation. My SIL called 911, and when she came back by an hour and a half later, the scene was gone. It was like a scary dream.
Speaking of which, why doesn’t Commerce (the west end) cross the RR tracks? It would solve a lot of traffic issues at McDonough and Adair if there were a grade crossing at Commerce. The crossing at Adair is marginally functional and downright dangerous for pedestrians. I see kids from Renfroe crossing the tracks right in front of the school all the time, not using the crosswalks, etc.
The kids are trespassing, they know it and they’ve been told. A crossing at Commerce wouldn’t stop that.
It would put crosswalks right at the school instead of blocks away. I think it would make a huge difference in the traffic at McDonough when the school kids are trying to get across the tracks.
I for one, stop on the tracks all the time. Well… when there’s a car ahead of me. I know, I’m risking death, dismemberment, and the death of all those around me, etc. However, I also see the sequence of lights on the approach of a train. Lanes parallel to the tracks (e.g., College) are given a red light, red lights go up on Dekalb and McDonough, and the light at McD (north only) and College turn only for those cars in the gap between Dekalb and College. These stay green for sufficient time to clear out off of those cars (and there can only be two or three per lane max).
I see this work pretty much every morning. The woman that didn’t know about the train until it was right behind her is probably also the one that will run over the bicyclist and think she hit a pothole. She should probably just hang up her phone and she’d be a lot more aware and less likely to either die or kill herself.
You provided a lot of details, yet not one thing convinced me that you are ever right to stop on tracks. Wrong…every way you look at it from my point of view.
More stupid train tricks:
http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/men-killed-by-trains-1358711.html