Strasburg's undertaker has a Nathan five-chime on his hearse; enough to wake the dead ...

Like my mother always said, "If he told you to jump in a lake, would you do it?"

Since when does some cop waving his doughnut picker relieve a driver of the responsibility to drive safely? If the driver would have looked down the track, saw the train, he could have stopped and had an argument with the cop while the train went by. Trains have all those lights on the front for a reason, you know. He didn't, and this was the result.

But the fault really lies with the police, for waving the parade traffic on without the faintest clue what they were doing. Did it occur to the cop to be certain there was room for the truck past the crossing before he waved the driver on? Are police even made aware of the responsibility they take when they override the standard traffic signals. Likely not, since if they screw up, you still get the ticket.

In a police escort, a driver is driving safely if he or she follows the guidance of a cop in the escort. Obviously, the escort routinely overrides the authority of signal devices. As I understand it, the cop was on the crossing with his cruiser, alongside of the truck at the time of impact. With a cop on the crossing flagging the truck across, what does it matter that there are headlights on the train? At the time this began to unfold, the train was not close enough for the driver to judge its speed and assess the risk of getting hit. As the events unfolded, complications arose such as the gate dropping onto the trailer full of people and the truck ahead failing to get far enough ahead to allow the truck that got hit to clear the crossing.

The complications delayed the crossing event. By the time the peril would have become obvious to the driver, it was too late do anything about it. Therefore, I see no reason to conclude that driver failed to see the train headlights, or that he failed to see the flashing red lights as he passed them and entered the crossing.

Incidentally, the driver did not get a ticket. He was not charged. The blame here directly lies with the police, as you have said.

Awful lot of foam here. Read the NTSB report. Carefully. This report is the result of hundreds of hours of interviews and research into every conceivable aspect of this event. Probably the only people not interviewed were the ones that died. The lawyers are going to have serious trouble proving negligence on the part of the driver. He will hide behind this report, and successfully. The folks who are on the hook are the parade organizers and the city.

All the speculation in the world will not change the facts of the matter, which were spelled out very clearly by the NTSB.

Jeff, I agree. Careful driving is everyone's responsibility. A railroad crossing is a highly "special" piece of roadway which requires highly special attention by the driver. To reduce driver workload, they provide flashers and bells. If that was a "quiet crossing" it would need all that and also quadrant gates, boulevard'ing or both.

I've never driven in any city except San Francisco, but I can say there, the workload is higher still because you have complex intersections, streetcars, lane restrictions for bikes, Muni and carpools, places with "No Right Turn" even though it's a one way to the right... at least those things are engineered. but not swarms of chaotic, bolty pedestrians and highly militant bicyclists who consider red lights to be suggestions. So I'm sorry, railroad crossing at a light in a parade < everyday driving in the city.

And no, it doesn't matter what the cop does. Cops can't stop trains unless they've recruited Hancock.

Note that Jeff and I are talking about a different meaning of "responsibility" than the NTSB uses or lawyers use. It's the difference between reducing diabetes nationally by 11% vs. blaming your company cafeteria vs. keeping yourself individually from getting diabetes at all.

As far as litigation, catch as catch can in a case like this. This guy has certainly learned his lesson from the sheer horror and guilt of being involved in this, and punitive damages won't teach anything more. The NTSB report just did plaintiffs a favor by steering guilt toward those with bottomless pockets. Ain't government grand.


One word. Texas.

Ah, true. So the defense now seeks to prevent such facts from ever being prevented to a jury...
http://www.newswest9.com/story/23898955 ... n-accident

I have no idea of the legal issues in this, but it would at least appear on the surface that the biggest threat to that case is that the City's pocket isn't as deep as UP's or the trailer manufacturer. Either the policy is smaller or liability limits, perhaps.

Having read lots of NTSB reports, I've never seen them have a problem with finding the railroad thoroughly at fault if that's the way they thought it went. There's any number of CFR changes (including the cell phone rules and other emergency orders like at Graniteville) that were IMMEDIATELY changed as a result of NTSB investigations. It most certainly does not give the railroad a free pass. You'll find comments on the Texas news forums that accuse the NTSB of being in UP's pocket. <insert laughter here>

Who had the last opportunity to avoid an accident? The driver, regardless of what the police officer or any other official told him to do...If he had stopped before getting on the track this disaster would not have happened.

Above, I said that I saw no reason to conclude that driver failed to see the train headlights, or that he failed to see the flashing red lights as he passed them and entered the crossing. I take that back because the report says the driver did indeed fail to see these things.

However, the report concludes that the driver was not negligent for missing these warnings because:

“Participation in the parade and law enforcement control of the parade route created an expectation on the part of the float driver that it was safe to continue through the grade crossing.”

The report places no blame on the driver.

The NTSB report, the judgement of the police in not issuing a ticket, and the responsibility and civil liability in this case are really three different things.

The NSTB likely has it's own ax to grind in wanting even MORE money spent on additional integration of traffic signals with crossing protection, so even thought these were integrated, they want them more integrated.

The police didn't ticket the driver, because they don't want to call attention to their own sorry performance.

And while I don't want to dump on the driver, who has enough to live with, ultimately it's his responsibility to ensure he has enough length to pull clear of the track before he starts onto the crossing.

I realize that the police are empowered to override the indication of automatic traffic signals. However, I also realize that in doing so they set up a special situation that they may not fully control, even though they think they do. Therefore, when being waved through an intersection, I slow down, and don't enter the intersection until I have ascertained that there is no other vehicle about to enter the intersection, no matter if the cop gets upset or not. Likewise, I certainly won't blindly enter upon a railroad crossing on a policeman's hand signal until I ascertain that it is safe to do so, as I well know that the police have no legal authority over railroad operations, nor any understanding of how much distance it will take a train to stop.

I certainly don't want to shift the blame away from the parties other than the driver, as there is certainly enough blame to go around. I simply want to point out that people who operate vehicles, whether they be automobiles, buses, streetcars, or trains, ultimately bear the responsibility for their safe operation, no matter what any bystander is trying to get them to do.

.

He has to live with the fact that four people were killed on a vehicle he was operating. I think he's been sufficiently punished.

This reminds me of a grade crossing collision at Intercession City, FL in the 1990s when an Amtrak train hit a truck trailer carrying a power generator that was hung up on the rails because there was super elevation of a track curve and the trailer was too low to clear. This was an oversize load, and there was a police escort for that, plus special permitting from the state that had approved the route and all the details of the move. Was the truck driver the captain of that ship? They did not charge him with any violation.

I handle auto claims for a major insurance carrier. While I rarely touch files with fatalities, I can tell you what I'd probably do if this scenario was dumped on my desk:
It'd be majority liability against the driver. He's the bottom-line controller of the vehicle. There's the potential for comparative negligence against the police for ground-guiding through the spot at that time but in the end, the driver had the greater duty to not get the vehicle into a position that any 'resonable driver' would consider not terribly bright, straddling a known active railroad crossing.
The 'resonable driver' standard is generally how liability is determined in a case like this. Regardless of the cop's involvement, the driver will almost certainly carry the majority of the liability. Depeneding on who his insurance carrier is, they'll probably pay the limits of his liability coverages.
The survivors, then, will probably sue his carrier as well as the city (and probably the railroad as well as they'd be considered the deepest pockets of all). If I were a betting man, all my money would be on this outcomes, regardless of the NTSB or any other official reports.

sounds like the classic error in train crossing accidents.

When the lights are flashing, the gates are down, the train's a-comin.

This goes for parade floats as well.

Reminds me of the road test for the CDL here in Arizona. The DOT yard that does the CDL testing here in Tucson is just east of the UP Nogales branch. If you make a right turn leaving the yard, you immediately come to a signalled grade crossing. Quite a few applicants have failed the road test over the years by busting that crossing. IIRC, that's one of the handful of violations that's an automatic failure. The inspectors would also ask the applicant the clearance of bridges that they had passed under to see if you were paying proper attention.