admin
A truck became lodged on a railway crossing this morning in the Netherlands.
D
Are they trying to turn around? I don’t even understand how the driver did this. He didn’t even get out of the cab before the collision!
G
Yes they turn, by backing into the street on the left.
D
That’s wild.. I would hope that “Don’t make a K turn over train tracks in a truck” would just be common sense.
R
Utter incompetence is the problem right here, common sense plays no part, this man is a moron
I
Turns out idiots can get licenses in the Netherlands too. It’s not just an American problem.
O
It’s illegal to even change gear while crossing railroad tracks in the US – wouldn’t be surprised if that applied in Europe too. So yeah, even more codified than just common sense.
E
Remember to unlock your doors before crossing a rail track. Your subscription may have ran out and there is no time to find your credit card to disable the locking
R
BMW product manager: 💡
T
Sounds like something Tesla might include.
A
You spelled BMW wrong!
T
Nope, teslas sometimes brick and no one can get out unless they know where the manual latch is and not everyone does because it’s a bit hidden.
I
Same in Lithuania. You commit to a gear before the train track and just pass it without fiddling around
A
It’s the same everywhere for reasons of safety. Changing gears can make the vehicle stall.
U
A K turn eh, what a great name!
E
Then the trucker is stupid, as soon as he saw the bars come down he should have just gone straight and figure the rest later
A
I drive a city bus for a living. If you are already crossing at railway tracks and the lights start up at the crossing? Just keep going. You have a full 18 to 20 seconds to get through there. In fact, keep going even if you hit the arm. Never change gears in a track or try to back up. Most important? Don’t try to correct a mistake with another mistake. Wow.
B
Driver should not be a commercial driver anymore. He drove up and first STOPPED on the tracks, stupid. Then backed up and stopped again! Then when the train was coming rather than just gunning it and going the wrong way to not get hit, he just waits for the train. What an idiot.
T
Totally, almost seems intentional, they had so many ways to avoid that
T
“never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence” that said, a scam involving stopping your truck on train tracks would be quite an incompetent scam
A
I am sure he was fired. That was just crazy to watch.
T
I think they were trying to make the left turn and pulled up too far initially and then didn’t realize the situation until the last second. I
D
Jesus Christ commit to a direction man. Dude went forward and backward so many times he would have been fine if he’d just stuck to one of them.
G
I will never understand why people hesitate when the barriers come down. Everyone knows that once those barriers drop, a train will appear. All he had to do was put his foot down and this would have been avoided.
D
“I don’t want to damage my vehicle and/or those barriers!” \- Every idiot shortly before a train destroys their vehicle and probably the barriers
N
They don’t want to do 5k worth of damage so they opt for 2mil worth of damage.
O
Fun part is… Those barriers are designed to break easily for exactly this reason. The arm is only connected with a single pin, you can see the one in front snap/pop with little force at 0:50.
B
Funniest part of that, in the US, car insurance is typically $30k-$60k of coverage. A commercial vehicle like that one, might be $1 million. The actual cost is going to far exceed that in most cases.
N
I just looked at my (Croatian) policy yesterday, it covers 1.3 million euros in material damages and 6.5 million in personal injuries. That’s the most basic policy required by the law (which matches the EU minimum), for 150 euro a year. I suspect the Netherlands are quite a bit higher (their insurance is *a lot* more expensive), AI says it’s about 6 million in material damages. 30k sounds laughable today, that doesn’t even cover a single new car.
J
Minimum here is $25k. It’s laughable and leads to a lot of people driving that should not be driving.
F
That’s insane. Mine covers £5M/$6.6M property liability, unlimited liability for personal injury/death, and costs ~£400/$540 per annum for fully comprehensive for a Mercedes CLK350. (UK) £1M for property damage and unlimited liability for injury/death is the legal minimum here.
B
Our shitty coverage is for 2 vehicles and 2 adults with generally clean driving records for close to $1600 annually. So yeah, a giant scam.
P
I bet you pay so much less for your insurance than we do, as well. Insurance in the US has devolved to nothing more than a scam, and it’s required by law.
F
I recently took a rail road safety training with Union Pacific in the US. We were told to drive through as those barriers are designed to break off. That appears to be the case with these barriers as well.
S
I couldn’t care if they were made of reinforced steel – they’ll be softer than a fucking train!
G
Same with the arms in parking lots. They snap off so that when dumbasses drive through them they don’t damage the machine, and the arm is easily replaced.
J
I’m never paying for parking ever again.
P
Go press the button for a new ticket, only pay for the minimum
S
Most places won’t print a ticket unless the weight sensor is tripped, from my understanding.
P
Mr Bean has some pretty good instructional videos on how to get around this.
Q
Hell, if there’s no attendant, try using the call button and say that the machine won’t accept your ticket. There’s a maybe 40% chance they just open the gate as long as you’re not a dick about it. Source: I’m on the other end of the call and if I’m busy, I’ll just open it.
A
Exactly. And if you hit the barriers stop on the other side and report it. Hitting the barrier is the least of anyone’s worries as everyone can see here.
S
The crazy part is those barriers are DESIGNED to break. Just drive right through. Sure there will be vehicle damage, but not nearly as much as **a fucking train hitting the vehicle**.
M
The Dutch railroads issued an official statement that those beams are \*designed\* to break if you put force on them – so that in a situation like this you should just drive through them. Because the train hits a lot harder.
A
I get the impression the reason people panic is the Barriers locking them in. And somehow their instinct kicks in not to damage them and the car. I seriously wonder if removing the barriers (but keep the blinking lights and bells) will reduce these kind of accidents.
I
At least in the US, the crossings with the lowest incidents of accidents are those with gates, four-quad gates and “special active devices” (unfortunately not defined in the referenced report below, but likely includes features such as median barriers to prevent vehicles from navigating around gates). PDF link to “In-Depth Data Analysis of Grade Crossing Accidents Resulting in Injuries and Fatalities” (see page 33 for incident rates based on warning devices): https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/2020-05/Data%20Analysis%20of%20Grade%20Crossing%20Accidents_rev.pdf
A
The barriers are not strong though, they are made in a way that any vehicle can still go through.
A
The whole time I was thinking “Just fucking *floor it* man!”, I wasn’t sure if the truck was getting stuck on something underneath, but I know damn well the amount of torque a truck pulls would rip anything stuck clean free if he put pedal to the metal.
S
It kind of looked like he was having a hard time getting around the car in front of him…
A
yeah that car initially caused the issue, but the truck driver handled it horribly too. the car pulled up and didn’t move an inch until the train was super close and only escaped when it became risky for them
D
Is it one of those roads are that are technically 2 way but only wide enough for 1.5? It looks like it’s trying to turn but doesn’t want to drive on the grass. EDIT: He was trying to do a 3 point turn over a railroad crossing.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings