Rant About Stupidity
I mean no offense to anyone here, nor do i intend to make anyone unhappy, but this is how i feel about the subject...
In my honest opinion, people in general as well as people as a species are stupid. We may very well be the smartest things to ever inhabit the earth, but we're also the stupidest. Confusing, eh?
Allow me to elaborate...we may be able to put a man on the moon (still debated, i might add), and we may be able to do alot of things that people in the stone age couldn't, including nation-wide rail service (though i bet even the egyptians couldn't make amtrak run on time or be profitable...
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Now, i must ask...if you were sitting at a grade crossing and knew little to nothing about trains, yet you knew what a railroad track looked like, and you knew what a crossbuck meant, what would you do? Here are your choices:
1- Remain in your vehicle, safely behind the protective crossing gate and obeying the warning bells and lights, and wait the passing of the VIA Rail passenger train (or other train, for that matter), which i might add, is moving at well above 75MPH and laying on the airhorns as it rolls through. Once the train is by (minuite or 2, depending on length and speed), and the lights have gone off, look both ways and proceed across the tracks and on your way, still alive and with all body-parts fully intact.
Or, option #2...
2- Remain in your vehicle, look towards the head end of the train, obviously moving very quickly, and making alot of noise. Proceed past the crossing gates, bells and lights, and try to get across the tracks, before the locomotive and following train, weighing some ungodly large amount, covering well over 100 feet per second. Most likly, you'll fail and, in the end, you'll become the new hood ornament on some locomotive, and cause the head-end crew serious trauma.
Sadly, most people who think they have something to gain and nothing to lose pick option #2. I refer to these people (in public, anyway) as "people of a lesser inteligence then the ground they walk on".....sure, some of them might be professers or scientists, but they just made the stupidist mistake you can make...actually, they made several...
First off, they decided to start a fight between (metaphorically speaking...) 2 GM Products. One of which weighs about 6000 pounds, is about 25 feet long, seats 4 comfortably and has a 5-star government crash-test rating. The other one, weighs about 100000 tons, is about 7500 feet long, seats 4 (or more) confortably and doesn't need a goverment crash-test rating. I'll leave it up to your imagination which will win. Second mistake they made was assuming the train will stop. Seriously, i've talked to people that were walking the CNR Mainline and asked them what they planned to do if a train came along. Their exact words were something along the lines of "Oh, there arn't many trains on this line...besides, they'll stop for us. In Nova Scotia, Pedestrians have the right of way, remember?" I lauged...there are over 30 trains a day on that line, moving at a track speed of 55MPH in that area...it takes a mile and a half to stop on a good day. And, pedestrians only have the right of way on crosswalks on streets...needless to say, CN police were alerted to their location shortly there after. Thirdly, they needlessly endangered themselves as well as endangering the lives of countless other people. Even if the headend crew arn't killed, they're going to be traumatized for life.
I don't think that making larger gates on the grade crossing is going to help any. Nor do i feel that more lights and bells are going to help any. In my opinion, what they need to do is spend money on advertising. Operation lifesaver is, in my opinion, the BEST thing to ever happen to railways. I think that large billboards should be covered with the images of cars after getting hit by a train. Also, i feel that more of those operation lifesaver clips should be produced. I think that they should do like CP did....take a fully loaded train on the mainling at a gradecrossing in the area where this clip is to be aired and park a vehicle in front of it, then video tape the results and show it to people in the area of the accident. That way, they know the area and know it's not staged or faked. Also, perhaps when filming, invite the people of the town out and show them first hand what can happen (from a safe distance of course). I think that, conbined with advertising, TV advertisements and billboards would help this. Banning the horns is asinine...it's totally counter-productive and hypocritical....i can give you a real-life example...
The WHRC shortline in my area hauls gypsum. Short trains....3 RS23 locomotives and 22 hoppers. They come into the unloading town, Hantsport, at about 10-15 miles per hour. They pass through 2 main-street crossings at this speed. The company that runs the unloader, Fundy Gypsum (FGC), rents an RS23 to switch the unloader. They cross over one side-street grade-crossing at 3-5MPH. Traffic is light on that street, most of the time. Fundy gypsum is permitted to lay on the horn, doing a full long-long-short-long grade crossing signal, where as WHRC, moving at 3 times the speed, with 3 times the motive power and twice the load, isn't permitted to even TOUCH the horns, or be faced with a disturbing the peach fine. Tell me, does that make sense? a short train crossing a hardly-traveled road is permitted to lay on the horns, yet a long train moving at a decent speed across two rather heavy-traffic roads isn't permitted to blow the horns at all, for 'fear' of being charged? That seems uberly stupid to me!
Now, i apoligize in advance to anyone i may have annoyed or irritated in this rather long and opinionated reply, it was not my intent. Yes, i do feel strongly about this. I've gotten several people charged for crossing in front of trains and endangering lives, including my own...i just don't think the goverment realizes the problem. It's not the railway's fault........it's our own stupidity.
Again, i apoligize to anyone i offended...it wasn't my intent. Please, don't send hatemail....
Later
AR
