At night doing 50-60 MPH, how hard is it to see someone laying on the tracks?

Very difficult, especially with curves and foliage near the tracks. Even worse in industrial districts.

You could see a body on the track, in darkness, about long enough to say "What's that?" before you run over it.

Once in a torrential rainstorm, we hit what we thought was a dog.  Saw it for 2 seconds or less, due to the rain.  You don't stop after hitting small animals.  When we arrived at our final terminal, we were informed that we had run over a young man, drunk, crawling on all fours.  A train behind us, after the rain stopped, reported the body.  

I made a report to the Claims Agent and never heard another word about it.

I suppose the answer depends in part on what the person is laying on the tracks. 

When i worked as a police officer, I dealt with mostly homeless people getting killed by NS trains...mostly night shift. 

Gentlemen,

   We still have a member of our family who drives the RR Engines, most times the guys on that train never even know a person is on the tracks, it happens all the time.  

Do not play around on the RR Tracks, especially after dark!

PCRR/Dave

It's not a fun experience... We were heading east on the Oakville sub (4 main tracks) with about  30  TOFCs and sure enough on a curve we ran over a person in a sleeping  position.  Apparently he had spent the day in a local drinking establishment and had previously spent  the  night in a yard track or  customers spur . This came out in the  Coroners  Investigation.... .  I was the head end brakeman and after an emergency  brake application I had to inspect the train , Made it back to the caboose but could not find anything. (thank god) but about 50 feet behind the caboose was the Conductor , tail-end brakeman and police along with a mass of something  "steaming" in the cool weather.  Time to head back to the head end .It still bothers me although it happened 40 years ago.

And you wanted to be a Railroader?

We had a teenager sitting on a rock beside the track. Watched his every move as he got up laid right across the rail. Nothing we could have done.
The odd thing was that he was only one of quite a few teenage suicides (other means involved) in that area in a span of a year or so.

Unless you can see a mile or two ahead it won't matter. Theres a crossing 20 minutes from where I live that has seen multiple suicides over the years.

This video  of a train hitting a car (been posted before) gives a great perspective on how it long it takes for that much mass to come to a stop.

The car stayed in front of the locomotive the whole way. Horrific.

At night, going 50 in a car, do you think you'll see someone in low beam headlights soon enough to stop?  If you haven't seen it, watch the dash cam video from the Uber car that struck a woman crossing road,

The thing that gets me is that people don't care that there is a crew up in that cab who has to live with what you decided to do. I remember on fb not to long ago one of my friends who is a locomotive engineer was talking about a suicide by train where he was running the train. The lady actually had the audacity to make eye contact with him before he struck her.

Bill

At 60 mph one just about has time to say "what the ???" before impact as you are grabbing the air.  Shocked to say the least.

Rule 106...

(a) A train will run under the direction of the Conductor

(b) The locomotive engineer of a train is in charge of and responsible for the operation of the engine of such train.

(c ) When a train is operated without a conductor the locomotive engineer will preform the duties of the conductor.

 Another definition..... ENGINEMAN.... The employee in charge of and responsible for the operation of an engine.

 Set all that aside,, and Use what ever makes you happy.