Monday, February 01, 2010

Why you should not leave your truck on railroad tracks

A semi-truck got stuck on a grade crossing in Acworth, GA this morning. Unfortunately, a CSX train was approaching the crossing, and a guy recorded the accident on his cell phone. What I find interesting is how fast the train is still going at the beginning of the video, even though it appears the brakes are already fully engaged, and how long it takes a heavy freight train like this to stop. It finally came to a stop about 300 ft or so behind the crossing.

There's a follow-up video on the same site that shows the front of the train after it pulled back a bit. Looks like mostly minor damage to the locomotive. There were no injuries. The truck driver got out in time, and the sheer mass of the train makes the impact not nearly as bad for the engineer as one might think.

This Youtube video has the dashboard view from the police car seen racing down the street in the first video.

1 comment:

Loppi said...

Oh man, thats real stupid!
At Germany a few weeks ago something similar happenend: A truck tried to take a shortcut over the railroad track...
http://www.abendblatt.de/hamburg/polizeimeldungen/article1350866/Bahn-rast-in-Lkw-Strecke-am-Nachmittag-wieder-frei.html
Greets from Germany!