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Here in Detroit, they have released the video from the Amtrak crash in Canton. It's kinda harsh, I hope it serves as a brutal reminder that you should never "try" to beat the train... you will lose.

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I've never seen a video of a crash from that angle, its amazing how quick that car came out of nowhere like that. Whole different perspective than the other video that was seen here
It is interesting to see how long it took the train to stop.
You have to be really, really stupid to do that....No sympathy here, except for the train crew, and any unwitting passengers in the car. How long it took the train to stop also caught my attention.....He went a looooonngg way....
and as it slows down - you can "hear" that he's in "Emergency" by the squealing.... Sad It does take a long time to stop a train.....
40 seconds, from the time he hit the car to a full stop.
And yeah...can't feel sorry for the driver of the car. Just the train crew, the passengers of the train who had to wait, and anyone sitting in the backseat of the car, or to the right of the idiot behind the fifth wheel. I'm sure the crossing had some sort of wrning device.
eightyeightfan1 Wrote:I'm sure the crossing had some sort of warning device.

Yes it did, the driver went around the gates that were down. The Amtrak train was traveling at 67 mph.

Here's the follow up article from the Detroit News. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.detnews.com/article/20090828/METRO01/908280371/1408/LOCAL">http://www.detnews.com/article/20090828 ... 1408/LOCAL</a><!-- m -->
I too was startled by how long it took the train to stop. They should show this in Driver's Ed classes.
Ralph
That's onof the things that they teach us at the Museum... Operation Lifesaver teaches it too... You can stop a car at a crossing at the last second... The train can not stop until it's way way past the crossing....... Sometimes 1/4 to 3/4 of a mile... Eek
Simple physics really. Several hundred tons of passenger train moving at about, what??? 60 mph? verses a 1.5 ton vehicle driven by an idiot who tries to jump the crossing.
eightyeightfan1 Wrote:I'm sure the crossing had some sort of wrning device.
There were flashing lights and the gates were down. Somewhere on this forum there is another video of the accident, that shows the Fusion clearly drives around another car that was already waiting (white suv?) and around the gates.
What a waste...the whole story from the parents on down is about as tragic as it can get.

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shaygetz Wrote:What a waste...the whole story from the parents on down is about as tragic as it can get.

If there is any bright spot, hopefully a few people will learn from this and future accidents can be prevented. But then again, just yesterday I saw two jaywalkers nearly get hit by a light rail train. As I work near the tracks, I see pedestrians jaywalk across the light rail tracks all the time - even when a crosswalk is less than 100 feet away. The real kicker is it isn't kids I see doing most of the jaywalking - It is adults in business suits.
As a parent, I can totally feel for the parents/family of the victims here. On the other hand, after seeing the kid has a suspended license at such a young age, he should never have been behind the wheel to get into this accident, and I do not feel bad for him at all. One less (fill in your adjective) on this planet
Yes, it is physics, but while the weight of the train exceeds that of the car many tens of times, so is the car's braking system many times stronger per unit weight of the vehicle than is that of the train. If trains had braking systems to match the efficiency of cars, trains would either have to change to compound tire surfaces and track, or they would simply slide until they stopped. Unfortunately, sliding is dangerous and highly deleterious to both the rails and the tires...which will quickly turn flat. So, properly functioning train brakes are going to allow the wheels to keep turning, which with their coefficient of friction on steels rails, means they must continue to turn for a very long while after a full or emergency application.
-Crandell
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