Footage of these light rail near misses may be funny to watch but authorities warn the endings could have been 'catastrophic'
www.abc.net.au
Three of the light rail collisions were with cars and one involved a pedestrian. In one incident, a car slammed into the side of a tram pushing it off the tracks.

Canberra’s light rail drivers have reported 41 near misses and four collisions in the ACT since January.

Authorities are pleading with Canberra commuters not to risk their lives around light rail.

ACT police have reminded commuters that they could face penalties for dangerous conduct.

  • zero_gravitasEnglish
    10·
    4 months ago

    Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.

    I was doing laundry in my basement, and I tripped over a metal bar that wasn’t there the moment before. I looked down: “Rail? WTF?” and then I saw concrete sleepers underneath and heard the rumbling.

    Deafening railroad horn. I dumped my wife’s pants, unfolded, and dove behind the water heater. It was a double-stacked Z train, headed east towards the fast single track of the BNSF Emporia Sub (Flint Hills). Majestic as hell: 75 mph, 6 units, distributed power: 4 ES44DC’s pulling, and 2 Dash-9’s pushing, all in run 8. Whole house smelled like diesel for a couple of hours!

    Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like twin iron bars running along the paths trains take. You could look for trains when you encounter the iron bars on the ground, and avoid these sorts of collisions. But such a measure would be extremely expensive. And how would one enforce a rule keeping the trains on those paths?

    A big hole in homeland security is railway engineer screening and hijacking prevention. There is nothing to stop a rogue engineer, or an ISIS terrorist, from driving a train into the Pentagon, the White House or the Statue of Liberty, and our government has done fuck-all to prevent it.

    • tombruzzo
      6·
      4 months ago

      This. I don’t care if I get cancelled for saying this but I think trams should stick to the tracks that were but on the road for them.

      They’re all over the bloody place, and how am I meant to see them with their size, bells, lights, and ads otherwise?

    • Riftinducer
      5·
      4 months ago

      This is either a weirdly specific copypasta or your brain is somewhat ironically completely off the rails. Either way, I’m here for it