Driver of car died in collision.
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
With the car deliberately situated like that relative to the lay of the tracks (nobody accidentally parks like that,) I conclude it was suicide. Very violent and very, very sad.
Unfortunately, there have been several similar incidents of apparent "suicide by train" recently. We had a 49 year old pedestrian walking down the middle of the track with earbuds on here in Nashville a couple of weeks ago who was struck and killed, in spite of the HIGH decibel horn blaring. Tragic for all, but my sympathy goes out to the front end crew, who will have to live with that horror! Very sad!
Holy cow!
Absolutely sickening.
<eyeballs comments on youtube..>
There's some question as to whether it was a suicide or a confused senior citizen. And the video (a longer version) was supposedly shot by someone else who didn't post it to YouTube, and called out the poster in the comments, sooooo this video may vanish at some point. Just FYI.
---PCJ
Which brings up another safety issue. If somebody is constantly in a confused state, what does one do with the keys?
I want to know why the person filming hadn't done anything to check on them before the train came. From the video it looks like the car was parked there.
Several unanswered questions for the investigators to pursue!
I agree that a senior or anyone else that able to be confused perhaps should not be driving!
I'm in favor of joining other countries in requiring driving tests for people over a certain age.
Wait until you get to an arbitrary age and see if you want Big Brother dictating whether you can get to medical appointments? States refuse to confiscate vehicles of convicted drunk and druggie drivers, which are much more of a threat on the nightly news.
I’m glad we have so many forum members who were there and can star with absolute certainty what happened!
I got to see the full video and I made a copy for myself. If you watch closely, the bell is sounding, the flashers and flashing and the the arm is beginning to lower so the driver accelerates and runs the gate as it lowers, They then see the gate down on the other side lowering and stop - they then try to back up and hit the lowered gate behind them.
I presume the driver Panics and attempts to make a U turn but then sees a train filling up their rear view mirror and freeze. You can see the wheels turning and the car trying to move just before impact. This is just my observation upon watching the full video.
Sadly they had ample room to just pull ahead and could have gotten in the clear instead of trying to make a U turn.
Regardless - please remember this was someone’s daughter, perhaps a mother, friend, wife, who just a mere 20 seconds earlier didn’t know their life was about to end.
My heart goes out to the crew too - they did nothing wrong but will have this on their conscience for the rest of their days, and with a trainload of NS top brass including the CEO and all the VPs. I talked with the assistant superintendent today on that territory - just a tragedy for everyone involved.
