To the contrary. We may be trained, but who hasn't run a red light by mistake? We have a T intersection near me where I have seen people make a left turn on a red light. I did it and then immediately realized my mistake. My wife has done it as well. Now we pay special attention to make certain we don't do it again. There is something about that intersection that cause people to ignore the red sign.

In Bend, OR people repeatedly run red lights rather than stop. I have seen the local gendarme ignore them because it ain't worth his time I guess. It doesn't matter how you attempt to control traffic, someone will go counter to rule. It's just human nature.

For tourist trains running only on weekends with occasional specials, the locals begin to think "I'm safe, they never (or seldom) is a train on this track". When suddenly at train appears, they blame the train! We all get distracted at times, and that is a principal cause for accidents according to what I have read.

All that said, I don't know what this guy was doing, but I'll bet you he was DUII. Just my opinion.

dan

After watching this video I found myself thinking, yeah, it seems about right. For at least 40... more like 50 or so hours a week I make my living driving one of those black and white cars nobody wants to see in their rear view mirror. I see so many distracted, inattentive drivers it's appaling. Without wanting to speculate on this incident, I'll just say that all the signs, bells, lights, or gizmos will not help todays drivers who are more interested in their radio/cd/gps/phone call/text message/venti coffee/etc. And having spent quite some time working on a local short line, I've seen it from the other end of the spectrum, as the one who can't swerve because flanged wheels aren't designed to swerve.

Folks, I wish I had the answer

First, about the CVSR grade crossing accident. From the photo in the Akron Beacon Journal, and the fact that I photographed the train there a couple of weeks ago, I can tell you this: Bath Rd. had always had just plain crossbucks, until now. Currently, there is a major grade crossing upgrade program going on on the CVSR in the National Park. A new gate and light installation is being put in at that crossing and most of it is up. However, it is not active yet, and the lights are turned into themselves, and there are no arms on the gate mechanisms. The driver of the mini-van involved was 71 y.o. and possibly could have thought the gates were active and no train was coming, not bothering to stop. The intersection with the main road through the valley, Riverview, is no more than 100' from the grade crossing and now has a traffic light there. It looked like the van was heading East towards the intersection, and maybe was focused on the traffic light, and not the grade crossing - like trying to catch a green traffic light and forgetting there might be a train coming, or not realizing the gates/lights were not functioning yet. Hard to get into someone else's mind about something like that, but there is enough going on in that place to cause some confusion, especially if you don't travel that way very often, or ever before.

The other comment I wanted to make about grade crossings in this country is the contrast with the way things work in Europe, at least in Poland, where I dealt with them in some quantity. Just about every significant highway grade crossing there is gated all-ways, the gates come down about TWO MINUTES before the train gets there (none of this only 20 seconds in advance stuff we in the US have), and nobody blows their horn or gets bent out of shape over the wait. Guess it's just the cultural difference in the way they regard waiting time in a more laid-back manner than we do. Probably doesn't hurt that most trains there are fairly fast passenger trains, not lumbering 100+ car coal trains that can delay you for 10 minutes or more.

The flip side of that is that they (at least the Wolsztyn Experience crews) don't slow down for grade crossings if the headlights fail at night/pre-dawn (or if the whistle fails either, according to Experience director Howard Jones). Happened to me and the person I was running with our last morning there in December. I was glad to be in the fireman's seat for that part, and told the person I was with when he asked me if I wanted to take over, "you're doing fine". Mama raised no fool - I thought it was pass-the-Pampers time just riding shotgun. Go like Hell and blow the whistle a little more! They fixed the electrical problem during the layover in Poznan (it was daylight by then anyway).