Earlier, we shared a post about a train engineer who only had seconds to declare an emergency and throw on the brakes before plowing into a semi truck stuck across the train tracks. In that accident, ten people were injured and sent to the hospital because of injuries resulting from the crash. To show that we weren’t simply talking about a random, once in a lifetime kind of event, consider this new story from Hereford, Texas.
A train in Hereford crashed through a semi truck that was stuck partway across the tracks. The driver of the truck survived because he got out of the cab and ran as soon as he saw the train. Seconds later, the train cut the truck in half, throwing the cab to one side of the tracks and the cargo to the other. Once again, the train’s engineers had very little time to react to the situation, though they managed to bring the speed of the train down to about sixty mph just before the impact. Amazingly, no one was injured this time.
According to the police, it isn’t clear why the truck was stuck across the tracks, and an investigation is still ongoing into the matter.
Semi trucks can become stuck on train tracks for any number of reasons. There can be the mechanical breakdown of the truck or the warning lights or gates. And there are driver errors such as ignoring warnings, trying to race across the tracks, or incorrectly figuring there is room to make it all the way across the tracks behind other traffic.
The thing to remember is that semi trucks do become stuck on tracks, and accidents do occur as a result. As we reported last time, up to fifteen accidents per train conductor’s career — most of which involve fatalities — is not an uncommon figure.
