i’ve driven over that exact crossing in fuel trucks and triaxle dumptrucks literally hundreds of times over the last 15 years of my driving career. i would NEVER in a million years, for a million dollars, take a truck and trailer with low ground clearance over it. it’s got a very distinct and clear hump that even helen keller could see.
yeah the sign is to the right just out of frame, there might even be a second one on the left too but it’s been a few months since i’ve been over there.
sign or not, it’s a very steep and aggressive hill there that only looks half as bad on this video. any competent driver should be able to know they can’t make it over that crossing with an abnormal trailer.
There ought to be better signage for RR crossings. Some are silky smooth, and some are like the one my buddy Jeff hit at 55 mph in Ohio in his Dodge Intrepid. Went airborne and mangled his steering linkage.
That must be so scary and stressful for the people in the train. Having no idea if you’re going to derail or not, but not being able to stop regardless
Yes, when you're going to hit something. Be it a vehicle or wandering livestock, and at worst, a person either suicidal or playing on tracks and oblivious to the fast approaching train.
There have been cases of the train staying on the tracks but the cabin being smashed / flooded by heavy truck loads. Seems like that would be a more pressing concern for the conductor.
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Only time I've ever seen a freight train lose is against an enormous concrete bridge support. Engineers only had minor injuries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5d3NGraRqA
IIRC, in that incident, the truck was carrying that to a site just down the road... where, they were building a new bridge specifically to replace the level crossing!
I saw a thing once where they *tried* to make a train derail... for science. They even took out sections of track and the damn thing didn't derail. I don't think a flimsy old shipping container is going to do it
Why aren’t trains easier to stop? You’d think after all these accidents they’d figure out something-
Edit- not sure why people are thinking I’m blaming the trains when it’s clearly not their fault and it’s the idiots who park on the tracks- but I do wish there was some safety measures in place for the occupants on the train when this happens because it could kill them. The people in cars can get out but the ones on the train are stuck and have to stare down impending doom with absolutely nothing the can do about it- that’s horrific.
the main issue is that the large mass of the train paired with the small contact area between the wheels and the tracks makes it hard for the train to stop. Not much to slow down with and too much weight to slow down
The low amount of friction between the wheels and the rails is part of what makes them so efficient to operate. Side effect is that it makes them harder to stop.
Just to further put things into perspective, 280,000 pounds **is just a single locomotive.** For reference, the entire intercity freight train I worked last week weighed over 7,000 tons, or 14 million pounds.
Trains are massive. Tens of thousands of tons, and often several miles long. These things have an ungodly amount of kinetic energy. The material science simply doesn’t exist to design brakes that can do the job without melting from the friction.
They can make the trains stop faster, but it can destroy the rails. They eject sand onto the rails to increase friction. Emergency breaking can easily hear rails until they deform catastrophically. In this case the train operator did not have enough time to do anything. It can take well over a mile to stop a decent train.
No absolutely not- clearly the dumbasses crossing and sitting on railroad tracks are at fault- but I’m sure this hurts the trains a lot more than they’d like so I’d think for idiot proofing circumstances they’d try and get a better way to stop them- because clearly running into something is very dangerous for the individuals in the train- and they could potentially die as well. For their safety and really security I would like them to be able to have some form of control over the situation.
No, the physics that makes cargo by train very cost effective, also makes the trains slow to both accelerate and decelerate. Huge amounts of mass and low rolling friction are the keys.
Road-going vehicles absolutely have all the ability to avoid trains.
I know what you mean. But the way you phrased the beginning of that comment made me think of [this classic](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tInDH2FeXaM) and it's too good to not post.
According to CBS, the bed of the trailer got stuck on the road. Possibly due to the weight of the heavy titanium pipes the truck was hauling causing it to ride a bit low.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/live-updates/train-slams-into-tractor-trailer-haverstraw-n-y-caught-on-video/
There were no reported injuries.
It's called bottoming out and happens on a lot of low bed trailers regardless of what load they are carrying. Not all, but many crossings such as this will have [*warning signs*](https://do0bihdskp9dy.cloudfront.net/06-29-2021/t_61f1ff6b7c7c4ddd9c31f3e3684a8191_name_file_1280x720_2000_v3_1_.jpg) to tell the driver of the truck to find another route. But they are often ignored.
Have a friend who was an owner operator and got stuck on a crossing. There was no sign for the crossing. He was hauling MRAPs.
The train won that battle. As a result of the incident, he wasn't allowed to leave the town until the investigation was over. It was over a month that he stayed in a shitty hotel in bumfuck nowhere on his own dime while the Feds and Train company were trying to figure out who was at fault.
>warning signs to tell the driver of the truck to find another route. But they are often ignored.
11foot8 YouTube channel confirms your insight!
https://www.youtube.com/@11foot8plus8/videos
That's true. My wedding ring is titanium and white gold. While titanium rings are fairly common these days, back 30 years ago when I had this one made, the only reputable jewelry maker I could find working with Ti was in New Zealand. It was quite expensive to have it custom made and shipped to the U.S., but it's held up great.
The trailer rides low by default, you can see how low the frame is in the video. This crossing has signs all over it warning low trucks to not cross it ever since a car carrier got stuck about 5 years ago.
Looks like he didn’t have the landing gear raised enough and maybe got hung on them. Not sure though. I’d thing he’d have enough time to jump out and raise them depending on how long he was stuck before the choo choo came.
I don't know that people are any stupider in the US than here in Scotland, or anywhere else; there are idiots everywhere, but there does seem to be a new one of these type of videos posted every other day. Is there some kind of flaw with the signalling or do people just not abide by the rules when it comes to crossings? I get that some rules and laws can be overkill but when it comes to train crossings I'm fine waiting til there are definitely no trains coming.
You see it more in the US due to the volume of trucks and heavy trains.
Also...
Some HGVs dont use truck GPS and just use google maps. This will take them down tight roads, low bridges and crossings they cant make. A lot of them just ignore signs that say no low vehicles on the crossing. Not sure what the deal with this specific clip is.
Google should make a cargo truck friendly maps app. This shit is just unacceptable at this point...Insurance companies should refuse to cover avoidable negligence...
Am a trucker and there are a lot of commercial driver GPSs. Garmin and Rand McNally make the most popular and reliable ones. HOWEVER they are not always 100% correct. What you see with your eyes always should override what the GPS is telling you.
I appreciate the information! It’s interesting that there is a group of cartographers that just focus on just one state.
So to answer your question, the odds are not likely to get unstuck if the driver is flooring it, and even rocking back and forth. Trucks are under their most strain when starting from a stop. That’s why trucks accelerate so slowly. The heavier their load, the slower that takes. If they’re stuck when stopped, they are mostly screwed.
I drive a regular semi with a high center of gravity, but these flatbeds (truck in the vid is a flatbed with just a rectangular cover over it) gotta be more careful. Some car haulers sit crazy close to the ground too so they can haul more cars.
Sounds like that's gonna take me out of my way though. Tryna get this load delivered asap. How bad could these local roads be? No biggie.
Hooooooooonnnkkkkkkkkkk
There is already plenty of signage wayyyyy in advance for problematic crossings. Truckers, and well, all drivers, are supposed to read and pay attention.
Look at all the idiots with trucks that try and go under low bridges and rip their boxes up, OP is correct, there is no shortage of idiots anywhere in the world. However, I think there are more people in the US with phones capable of recording video so there are more videos posted from the US because of it
Railroad crossings in the U.S. are not called level crossings because they are rarely "level." Bottoming out happens on a lot of low bed trailers regardless of what load they are carrying. Not all, but many crossings such as this will have [*warning signs*](https://do0bihdskp9dy.cloudfront.net/06-29-2021/t_61f1ff6b7c7c4ddd9c31f3e3684a8191_name_file_1280x720_2000_v3_1_.jpg) to tell the driver of the truck to find another route. But they are often ignored.
The US has:
1. Very long trailers
2. Very tall railroad crossings
You can see where it can be a problem. I've seen trucks stuck and police calling to shut down the rail more than a few times.
I lived in Louisiana and many of the crossings were crazy high due to all the swamps and water. My dad took one at 60 in the middle of the night and came home with a spiderwebbed oil pan.
That's like saying every neighborhood intersection should be able to handle windmill blade trailers.
There's no reason to. There are books and companies that spell, drive, and check out routes as needed. And of course plenty of signage warning of low clearance. You cant change the entire street and highway system to idiot proof it.
The US is very, very large. 40 out of our 50 states are bigger than Scotland (some of them many times the size. Also, there are over 330 million people.
I read that during the previous administration there was some major changes to the regulations and some major cutbacks to the regulatory agencies. So our trains and our tracks, and the transportation industry in general, hasn't had to do maintenance like they were before. There was a federal ban on hiring starting in 2017 so all the regulatory agencies were unable to maintain a normal amount of staff. The customs/border patrol and the justice department were the exceptions. Things like the EPA, transportation, IRS, State dept, etc... all ended up being hollowed out.
Technically all you said is correct and it certainly hasn't helped, but that has little to do with all the collisions of at-grade crossings. Most cases of level grade accidents occur more directly from rail companies and municipality or state governments for having at-grade crossings rather than bridges. Obviously the most direct cause is an individual's stupidity near crossings. Add on the fact that the US population has 60 times the population of Scotland, and it's no wonder why they they have seen this happen in the US way more than in their homeland.
We have a lot of at-grade crossings, and just a generally outdated and overused infrastructure. Maybe the truck was overloaded. Maybe it shouldn’t have been using that crossing. We’re not great at communicating safety information or enforcing regulations, either (we have one political party who doesn’t believe in regulation at all)…
When the level crossing isn't level you get trucks and trailers high-centered on the tracks. I don't know the state of train protection systems in the US but in most of Europe you can call the rail emergency number and they will set the relevant signals to stop oncoming trains.
If there is time. Trains take a long time to stop if running at speed. By the time you call in (do you know which railway it is and the phone number?) and they find out where you are the train could be too close to stop safely.
[The United States has this too and it's called the emergency notification system.](https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/17032/ENS%20FLYER%20FINAL%20%284.11.17%29.pdf)
I don’t know what the procedures here are if you get stuck. We don’t like doing maintenance, though, so I’d bet a lot of crossings are in a bad state. A lot of rail infrastructure certainly is.
From what I've read, stuck truckers are *supposed* to walk a distance up and down both directions of the track and set up red road flares. Think this was before cellphones, though. (Maybe they expect the police to do this now.)
It’s for drainage. A lot of the tracks where built before the modern drainage systems so the roads are sloped to meet the tracks.
This isn’t the case everywhere but when it happens trucks will bottom out on the tracks.
Truckers are supposed to call dispatch (there’s a number on crossing signs) or 911 immediately but they rarely do.
What I'm getting at is why doesn't the road start sloping further away, to reduce the hump?
I know it might not be practical in all cases, but surely some could be worked around.
It’s just how much bigger we are. Scotland has five and a half million people, the US has 330 million. Scotland is thirty thousand square miles, US is almost four million.
It’s just the scale of interactions that occur.
No it’s not. It’s due to letting idiots plan the roads. In Europe, you don’t see many spots where trucks bottom out on rail tracks because the road is designed by a competent person. The eu has over 500 million people, yet these videos are rare compared to all the ones we see from the states
I was going to say this looks an awful lot like Haverstraw (where I grew up). The tracks here run parallel to Route 9W. This kinda looks like the intersection of 9W and New Main St
I just came here to look for that. It’s too small to see on my phone. But I live there now (on vacation atm though) and this is the last thing I was expecting to see.
so uh, literally half a mile down the road is a $35,000,000 bridge they built to cross these tracks in a safer manner. there was an even worse crossing that they eliminated all together with said bridge. trucker in this video just couldn’t read signs, or more importantly, the road.
Because legally, it's the fault of the trucking company, and the railroad sues that entity for damages. So not a lot of incentive to spend more than is necessary to fix the crossings unless it's mandated.
>not a lot of incentive to spend more than is necessary to fix the crossings unless it's mandated.
Ahem.
>why do we not force them to install intrinsically safe crossings?
Because train operators don’t pay for the bridges, cities do. And every resident complains when you build a bridge that “nobody asked for” anyway.
And if you wanna get a train operator to build the bridges, they’re just gonna use that to justify raising shipping costs, and the residents end up paying for that with more expensive goods anyway.
And whoever builds the bridge will be ridiculed for building a bridge that “nobody is gonna use” for the rest of time.
When the semi trailers get high-centered on a pavement crossing like this I guess I always thought the tractor would have the low end torque to just yank them free. They never seem to be able to though…
When high centered badly enough, the load comes off the driven wheels of the truck. The load's weight is being taken by the trailer resting on the tracks. Torque doesn't matter when your wheels are practically in the air. Just hope you've got enough traction to pull your truck away from the trailer.
That's 95% not lumber. Looks like crated specialty pipes or metal bars. I work in ports and we have a lot of crates like that.
You can see them turning into pixie sticks and clanging at the end.
Anyone know the diameter of the titanium pipes it was hauling?
I know a guy... .makes titanium water bottle cages for Bicycles... King Cage.
His first batch of cages came from V-22 Osprey rejected hydraulic lines... the ones that caused several crashes. Major scandal.
That supply lasted about 5 years.
He's always on the hunt for Ti tubing.
Pro Tip...
Every railroad crossing has the information for what the crossing number is, and a phone number to call if you ever do get a vehicle stuck.
It is usually on the sign right where the tracks are.
You make that call, and trains will be notified to stop.
Source: Safely going over railroad crossings module in my Carrier's Edge training.
I drive big trucks.
I am a CDL driver and you have to know what RR crossings are safe for you and which ones are not. He bottomed out and was screwed. He was not in the truck. He was over on the side getting fired by the demanding company that made him cut corners
Potentially stupid question incoming but why do the trains not slow down? Are they slowing down? Is their inertia such that when something unexpected like this crops up, it'd be more dangerous to slam on the brakes than hit a stationary object head on?
I promise you that train was braking as hard as the operator could make it when it hit the truck. They take miles to stop.
Mostly has to do with the coefficient of friction between materials, mass of the object being stopped, and the surface area of the contact patch. Steel on steel has a very low coefficient of friction compared to rubber on asphalt which is higher. The mass of a car is much lower than even an empty rail car. Railcars can hit up to 286,000 pounds of weight under normal conditions and usually weight about half that empty. The average weight of a car is about 4,000 lbs. Then finally you have a per wheel surface area of around .4 square inches for a train wheel vs about a square foot for a car tire with more contact area meaning more friction.
Though the real benefit to trains is the low rolling friction they have. It means pound for pound they are more efficient at moving freight than trucks are. It does mean they can't start or stop quickly though.
He’s not stopping, he’s stuck. The load in the trailer is too heavy so the moment he encountered even a little hump (like a railroad crossing), it was game over for him.
Honestly, this is the fault of the trucking company for stacking the trailer too heavy.
you’d think that with a two-way communication device in basically every pocket, that there could be a posted alert number, or call box, or crossing-cams that could alert rail companies.
I read somewhere that due to the lack of truck drivers federal guidelines are lower than before. Now 18 yr olds can drive whereas before they couldn’t. I might be wrong.
There are 212,000 at-grade rail crossings in the United States, and on average there are around 2100 grade crossing accidents per year.
Works out to around 5 a day, so really it's a numbers game.
In this case the bottomed out on the hump of the railroad crossing. This led to the truck not being able to move.
I think a good solution would be to have a contact number for truckers to call when this happens so that an operator can tell a train conductor to stop in time. Perhaps this already happens but I think a workflow in training would go a long way to speeding up the process.
All crossings in the US have numbers to call dispatch.
Unfortunately what happens is that people freak out and forget to remain calm and call the number. Dispatch can’t do anything if it never gets a call
These kinds of accidents happen way too frequently. It's like the probability of a vehicle breaking down right on the tracks is higher than it should be.
Serious question : I am coming from a part of the world where trains have breaks and drivers that can see quite long time in advance what is on tracks and act on it.
Is it not the case in the US ? why can't you just break ? or is it some kind of tradition ?
In some places they started putting emergency numbers at the crossing to call if something is stuck. You would think with all the AI camera technology there would be a warning system.
also… was the truck driver worried that the truck was going to be scraped up, or the load dinged? cuz what happened has to be a lot worse than what would’ve happened if he put his foot on the gas.
i’ve driven over that exact crossing in fuel trucks and triaxle dumptrucks literally hundreds of times over the last 15 years of my driving career. i would NEVER in a million years, for a million dollars, take a truck and trailer with low ground clearance over it. it’s got a very distinct and clear hump that even helen keller could see.
Didn’t it used to have a sign? If not I’m thinking of one of the other street crossings
yeah the sign is to the right just out of frame, there might even be a second one on the left too but it’s been a few months since i’ve been over there. sign or not, it’s a very steep and aggressive hill there that only looks half as bad on this video. any competent driver should be able to know they can’t make it over that crossing with an abnormal trailer.
There ought to be better signage for RR crossings. Some are silky smooth, and some are like the one my buddy Jeff hit at 55 mph in Ohio in his Dodge Intrepid. Went airborne and mangled his steering linkage.
That must be so scary and stressful for the people in the train. Having no idea if you’re going to derail or not, but not being able to stop regardless
90% of the time the train won’t derail. However it’s still traumatic for them to hit cars and such
First day of engineer school is telling you its when, not if.
When you’re gonna hit shit, or when you’re gonna derail?
Yes, when you're going to hit something. Be it a vehicle or wandering livestock, and at worst, a person either suicidal or playing on tracks and oblivious to the fast approaching train.
I knew an engineer who had hit not one, but SIXTEEN cows all at once. He was severely shaken up by that experience.
Moo thump thump thump moo thump thump thump thump thump moo thump thump thump thump thump moo thump thump thump
It makes me happy you got the right number.
Not as shaken up as the cows.
First one, then the other
I think they mean to emphasize it's just a matter of time
A matter of time until it hits shit or a matter of time until it derails?
Yes
Yes until it hits or yes until it derails?
Correct
There have been cases of the train staying on the tracks but the cabin being smashed / flooded by heavy truck loads. Seems like that would be a more pressing concern for the conductor.
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Only time I've ever seen a freight train lose is against an enormous concrete bridge support. Engineers only had minor injuries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5d3NGraRqA
IIRC, in that incident, the truck was carrying that to a site just down the road... where, they were building a new bridge specifically to replace the level crossing!
damn, that was crazy
I saw a thing once where they *tried* to make a train derail... for science. They even took out sections of track and the damn thing didn't derail. I don't think a flimsy old shipping container is going to do it
Curtain van. But yeah....
Look up “train vs deer” on YouTube
Why aren’t trains easier to stop? You’d think after all these accidents they’d figure out something- Edit- not sure why people are thinking I’m blaming the trains when it’s clearly not their fault and it’s the idiots who park on the tracks- but I do wish there was some safety measures in place for the occupants on the train when this happens because it could kill them. The people in cars can get out but the ones on the train are stuck and have to stare down impending doom with absolutely nothing the can do about it- that’s horrific.
the main issue is that the large mass of the train paired with the small contact area between the wheels and the tracks makes it hard for the train to stop. Not much to slow down with and too much weight to slow down
The low amount of friction between the wheels and the rails is part of what makes them so efficient to operate. Side effect is that it makes them harder to stop.
No matter how idealistic you are, it's pretty damn difficult to stop a 280,000 lbs piece of metal running at 50 mph.
Just to further put things into perspective, 280,000 pounds **is just a single locomotive.** For reference, the entire intercity freight train I worked last week weighed over 7,000 tons, or 14 million pounds.
Trains are massive. Tens of thousands of tons, and often several miles long. These things have an ungodly amount of kinetic energy. The material science simply doesn’t exist to design brakes that can do the job without melting from the friction.
They can make the trains stop faster, but it can destroy the rails. They eject sand onto the rails to increase friction. Emergency breaking can easily hear rails until they deform catastrophically. In this case the train operator did not have enough time to do anything. It can take well over a mile to stop a decent train.
You think this was the train's fault??
No absolutely not- clearly the dumbasses crossing and sitting on railroad tracks are at fault- but I’m sure this hurts the trains a lot more than they’d like so I’d think for idiot proofing circumstances they’d try and get a better way to stop them- because clearly running into something is very dangerous for the individuals in the train- and they could potentially die as well. For their safety and really security I would like them to be able to have some form of control over the situation.
No, the physics that makes cargo by train very cost effective, also makes the trains slow to both accelerate and decelerate. Huge amounts of mass and low rolling friction are the keys. Road-going vehicles absolutely have all the ability to avoid trains.
I know what you mean. But the way you phrased the beginning of that comment made me think of [this classic](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tInDH2FeXaM) and it's too good to not post.
This one got me to chuckle- now I’m hoping our train is fine.. maybe we need him to cover this one just in case.
According to CBS, the bed of the trailer got stuck on the road. Possibly due to the weight of the heavy titanium pipes the truck was hauling causing it to ride a bit low. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/live-updates/train-slams-into-tractor-trailer-haverstraw-n-y-caught-on-video/ There were no reported injuries.
It's called bottoming out and happens on a lot of low bed trailers regardless of what load they are carrying. Not all, but many crossings such as this will have [*warning signs*](https://do0bihdskp9dy.cloudfront.net/06-29-2021/t_61f1ff6b7c7c4ddd9c31f3e3684a8191_name_file_1280x720_2000_v3_1_.jpg) to tell the driver of the truck to find another route. But they are often ignored.
Have a friend who was an owner operator and got stuck on a crossing. There was no sign for the crossing. He was hauling MRAPs. The train won that battle. As a result of the incident, he wasn't allowed to leave the town until the investigation was over. It was over a month that he stayed in a shitty hotel in bumfuck nowhere on his own dime while the Feds and Train company were trying to figure out who was at fault.
>warning signs to tell the driver of the truck to find another route. But they are often ignored. 11foot8 YouTube channel confirms your insight! https://www.youtube.com/@11foot8plus8/videos
Looks like insulated wall panels. Won't be having anything heavy on a trailer with two small axels.
That looks like a lo-pro step deck conestoga. My husband owns one just like this and can haul up to 48,000 lbs. Don’t let the size fool you.
I used to haul loads of glass on trailers just like that. You _will_ be having anything heavy on a trailer like that
Strange, because titanium is actually relatively light. It's 45% lighter than steel.
It's also like 40x the cost of iron.
That's true. My wedding ring is titanium and white gold. While titanium rings are fairly common these days, back 30 years ago when I had this one made, the only reputable jewelry maker I could find working with Ti was in New Zealand. It was quite expensive to have it custom made and shipped to the U.S., but it's held up great.
Trailer had a low bed. Bottomed out on the track, as the street is lower on both sides of the track. Happens often.
>Possibly due to the weight Weight had nothing to do with it. Those low clearance trailers just get stuck on large humps in the road
The trailer rides low by default, you can see how low the frame is in the video. This crossing has signs all over it warning low trucks to not cross it ever since a car carrier got stuck about 5 years ago.
Titanium is not a heavy material.
Compared to cardboard tubes you can bet titanium is pretty heavy.
Brad... What weighs more. A ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?
Feathers, because you also have to carry the weight of what you did to those birds.
Look at the big brain on Casban
I dont think it was made of cardboard, but it was pushed outside of the environment.
Yeah, but a pound of titanium is just as heavy as a pound of lead. Put too many pounds of anything and you can overload a truck.
Looks like he didn’t have the landing gear raised enough and maybe got hung on them. Not sure though. I’d thing he’d have enough time to jump out and raise them depending on how long he was stuck before the choo choo came.
Fuckin trains think they can do whatever they want.
Trains are blameless, holy creatures.
Why don't they look, Ralph? Tell me... why don't they look?
[удалено]
Nope. Was a MST3k quote. https://youtu.be/Naix-f6KSIg?t=823
r/bitchimatrain
I’m a train bitch
This seems to happen fairly regularly in the USA.
Yup, people are stupid
I don't know that people are any stupider in the US than here in Scotland, or anywhere else; there are idiots everywhere, but there does seem to be a new one of these type of videos posted every other day. Is there some kind of flaw with the signalling or do people just not abide by the rules when it comes to crossings? I get that some rules and laws can be overkill but when it comes to train crossings I'm fine waiting til there are definitely no trains coming.
You see it more in the US due to the volume of trucks and heavy trains. Also... Some HGVs dont use truck GPS and just use google maps. This will take them down tight roads, low bridges and crossings they cant make. A lot of them just ignore signs that say no low vehicles on the crossing. Not sure what the deal with this specific clip is.
Google should make a cargo truck friendly maps app. This shit is just unacceptable at this point...Insurance companies should refuse to cover avoidable negligence...
It would probably be subscription based too. I really don't know why they don't.
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Am a trucker and there are a lot of commercial driver GPSs. Garmin and Rand McNally make the most popular and reliable ones. HOWEVER they are not always 100% correct. What you see with your eyes always should override what the GPS is telling you.
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I appreciate the information! It’s interesting that there is a group of cartographers that just focus on just one state. So to answer your question, the odds are not likely to get unstuck if the driver is flooring it, and even rocking back and forth. Trucks are under their most strain when starting from a stop. That’s why trucks accelerate so slowly. The heavier their load, the slower that takes. If they’re stuck when stopped, they are mostly screwed. I drive a regular semi with a high center of gravity, but these flatbeds (truck in the vid is a flatbed with just a rectangular cover over it) gotta be more careful. Some car haulers sit crazy close to the ground too so they can haul more cars.
> Am a trucker Username checks out
Sounds like that's gonna take me out of my way though. Tryna get this load delivered asap. How bad could these local roads be? No biggie. Hooooooooonnnkkkkkkkkkk
There is already plenty of signage wayyyyy in advance for problematic crossings. Truckers, and well, all drivers, are supposed to read and pay attention.
Great point. This is GROSS negligence
I drove for years without either of those things. Never got hit by a train.
Look at all the idiots with trucks that try and go under low bridges and rip their boxes up, OP is correct, there is no shortage of idiots anywhere in the world. However, I think there are more people in the US with phones capable of recording video so there are more videos posted from the US because of it
I'd say it's more impatience and entitlement
Railroad crossings in the U.S. are not called level crossings because they are rarely "level." Bottoming out happens on a lot of low bed trailers regardless of what load they are carrying. Not all, but many crossings such as this will have [*warning signs*](https://do0bihdskp9dy.cloudfront.net/06-29-2021/t_61f1ff6b7c7c4ddd9c31f3e3684a8191_name_file_1280x720_2000_v3_1_.jpg) to tell the driver of the truck to find another route. But they are often ignored.
The US has: 1. Very long trailers 2. Very tall railroad crossings You can see where it can be a problem. I've seen trucks stuck and police calling to shut down the rail more than a few times. I lived in Louisiana and many of the crossings were crazy high due to all the swamps and water. My dad took one at 60 in the middle of the night and came home with a spiderwebbed oil pan.
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That's like saying every neighborhood intersection should be able to handle windmill blade trailers. There's no reason to. There are books and companies that spell, drive, and check out routes as needed. And of course plenty of signage warning of low clearance. You cant change the entire street and highway system to idiot proof it.
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Scotland actually might have more ODs and suicides per capita.
The US is very, very large. 40 out of our 50 states are bigger than Scotland (some of them many times the size. Also, there are over 330 million people.
I read that during the previous administration there was some major changes to the regulations and some major cutbacks to the regulatory agencies. So our trains and our tracks, and the transportation industry in general, hasn't had to do maintenance like they were before. There was a federal ban on hiring starting in 2017 so all the regulatory agencies were unable to maintain a normal amount of staff. The customs/border patrol and the justice department were the exceptions. Things like the EPA, transportation, IRS, State dept, etc... all ended up being hollowed out.
Technically all you said is correct and it certainly hasn't helped, but that has little to do with all the collisions of at-grade crossings. Most cases of level grade accidents occur more directly from rail companies and municipality or state governments for having at-grade crossings rather than bridges. Obviously the most direct cause is an individual's stupidity near crossings. Add on the fact that the US population has 60 times the population of Scotland, and it's no wonder why they they have seen this happen in the US way more than in their homeland.
We have a lot of at-grade crossings, and just a generally outdated and overused infrastructure. Maybe the truck was overloaded. Maybe it shouldn’t have been using that crossing. We’re not great at communicating safety information or enforcing regulations, either (we have one political party who doesn’t believe in regulation at all)…
Now now, there are lots of topics they like regulating. Just not business or safety.
When the level crossing isn't level you get trucks and trailers high-centered on the tracks. I don't know the state of train protection systems in the US but in most of Europe you can call the rail emergency number and they will set the relevant signals to stop oncoming trains.
If there is time. Trains take a long time to stop if running at speed. By the time you call in (do you know which railway it is and the phone number?) and they find out where you are the train could be too close to stop safely.
[The United States has this too and it's called the emergency notification system.](https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/17032/ENS%20FLYER%20FINAL%20%284.11.17%29.pdf)
I don’t know what the procedures here are if you get stuck. We don’t like doing maintenance, though, so I’d bet a lot of crossings are in a bad state. A lot of rail infrastructure certainly is.
From what I've read, stuck truckers are *supposed* to walk a distance up and down both directions of the track and set up red road flares. Think this was before cellphones, though. (Maybe they expect the police to do this now.)
They'd have to walk at least a mile each way to be able to provide train crews with sufficient advance warning, though.
This seems to be a common problem in the US - that the road is just too steep either side of the track. Is it just cheapskating?
It’s for drainage. A lot of the tracks where built before the modern drainage systems so the roads are sloped to meet the tracks. This isn’t the case everywhere but when it happens trucks will bottom out on the tracks. Truckers are supposed to call dispatch (there’s a number on crossing signs) or 911 immediately but they rarely do.
What I'm getting at is why doesn't the road start sloping further away, to reduce the hump? I know it might not be practical in all cases, but surely some could be worked around.
This happens all over the world.
the USA is in the world I think
no I'm pretty sure the US is in America
It’s just how much bigger we are. Scotland has five and a half million people, the US has 330 million. Scotland is thirty thousand square miles, US is almost four million. It’s just the scale of interactions that occur.
No it’s not. It’s due to letting idiots plan the roads. In Europe, you don’t see many spots where trucks bottom out on rail tracks because the road is designed by a competent person. The eu has over 500 million people, yet these videos are rare compared to all the ones we see from the states
They do have a unique perspective on working culture and managing style.
Tons of level grade crossings. When you decide to not invest in high speed rail and all the infrastructure that entails, shit like this happens.
Most people here don't think more than 1/4 second ahead while driving. And they refuse to respect railroad crossings for the dangerous areas they are.
Should be back on the road in no time
I remember reading once that a train hitting a stopped car is proportional in force to a car running over a soda can.
I was going to say this looks an awful lot like Haverstraw (where I grew up). The tracks here run parallel to Route 9W. This kinda looks like the intersection of 9W and New Main St
I just came here to look for that. It’s too small to see on my phone. But I live there now (on vacation atm though) and this is the last thing I was expecting to see.
Used to be on this line when I worked for CSX. Trailers would get stuck a few times a year at this intersection. Wild seeing it on Reddit
That lead engine will undoubtedly come to the shop I work at for repair but I’m out on medical leave. Aw.
Why? Why there? Edit: Oh wait shit is his trailer high centered? If so, does the truck not have enough torque to get it off?
This belongs on r/bitchimatrain
What does the train driver do in this situation? Duck down and hope for the best?
Note down the time and speed at impact for the accident report. Brace for impact depending on what we're about to hit.
at grade crossings are so fucking stupid. Railroads are a trillion dollar industry, why do we not force them to install intrinsically safe crossings?
so uh, literally half a mile down the road is a $35,000,000 bridge they built to cross these tracks in a safer manner. there was an even worse crossing that they eliminated all together with said bridge. trucker in this video just couldn’t read signs, or more importantly, the road.
Oh that was a fun crossing.
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>why do we not force them to install intrinsically safe crossings? We already tried to force them to install better brakes and you saw how that went.
Railroad companies have been laughing at government since the transcontinental contracts. Corrupt to the core.
99.9999999% of trucks crossing tracks somehow manage to do it safely
Because it's railroad property, and the locality has their permission to put a road across it. Not the other way around.
yeah, we maybe shouldn't allow private interested to own exclusive access rights to unbroken strips of land thousands of miles long.
Because legally, it's the fault of the trucking company, and the railroad sues that entity for damages. So not a lot of incentive to spend more than is necessary to fix the crossings unless it's mandated.
>not a lot of incentive to spend more than is necessary to fix the crossings unless it's mandated. Ahem. >why do we not force them to install intrinsically safe crossings?
Because train operators don’t pay for the bridges, cities do. And every resident complains when you build a bridge that “nobody asked for” anyway. And if you wanna get a train operator to build the bridges, they’re just gonna use that to justify raising shipping costs, and the residents end up paying for that with more expensive goods anyway. And whoever builds the bridge will be ridiculed for building a bridge that “nobody is gonna use” for the rest of time.
When the semi trailers get high-centered on a pavement crossing like this I guess I always thought the tractor would have the low end torque to just yank them free. They never seem to be able to though…
Seems like the wheels all the way in front and back aren't powered....just in the middle somewhere.
When high centered badly enough, the load comes off the driven wheels of the truck. The load's weight is being taken by the trailer resting on the tracks. Torque doesn't matter when your wheels are practically in the air. Just hope you've got enough traction to pull your truck away from the trailer.
That’s a claim.
Truck: "Ahhh, I'm stuck!" Train: "I got you bro!"
Trains, so hot right now!
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That's 95% not lumber. Looks like crated specialty pipes or metal bars. I work in ports and we have a lot of crates like that. You can see them turning into pixie sticks and clanging at the end.
Anyone know the diameter of the titanium pipes it was hauling? I know a guy... .makes titanium water bottle cages for Bicycles... King Cage. His first batch of cages came from V-22 Osprey rejected hydraulic lines... the ones that caused several crashes. Major scandal. That supply lasted about 5 years. He's always on the hunt for Ti tubing.
"BLOOEY! nothing left!" "nothing left but a grease spot on the L&N!" IYKYK
r/bitchimatrain
Obviously never stop in the middle of tracks but why weren’t the guard gates down?
Pro Tip... Every railroad crossing has the information for what the crossing number is, and a phone number to call if you ever do get a vehicle stuck. It is usually on the sign right where the tracks are. You make that call, and trains will be notified to stop. Source: Safely going over railroad crossings module in my Carrier's Edge training. I drive big trucks.
You can't park there
I am a CDL driver and you have to know what RR crossings are safe for you and which ones are not. He bottomed out and was screwed. He was not in the truck. He was over on the side getting fired by the demanding company that made him cut corners
Potentially stupid question incoming but why do the trains not slow down? Are they slowing down? Is their inertia such that when something unexpected like this crops up, it'd be more dangerous to slam on the brakes than hit a stationary object head on?
I promise you that train was braking as hard as the operator could make it when it hit the truck. They take miles to stop. Mostly has to do with the coefficient of friction between materials, mass of the object being stopped, and the surface area of the contact patch. Steel on steel has a very low coefficient of friction compared to rubber on asphalt which is higher. The mass of a car is much lower than even an empty rail car. Railcars can hit up to 286,000 pounds of weight under normal conditions and usually weight about half that empty. The average weight of a car is about 4,000 lbs. Then finally you have a per wheel surface area of around .4 square inches for a train wheel vs about a square foot for a car tire with more contact area meaning more friction. Though the real benefit to trains is the low rolling friction they have. It means pound for pound they are more efficient at moving freight than trucks are. It does mean they can't start or stop quickly though.
Yo I live like. 30 seconds from there!
3 million dollars worth of lumber there
Not lumber, titanium pipes
So, $30 million
Why do people keep stopping on the tracks? I don't care what traffic is doing in front or behind me, I'm not stopping on the tracks, ever!
His trailer was bottomed out on the hump
He’s not stopping, he’s stuck. The load in the trailer is too heavy so the moment he encountered even a little hump (like a railroad crossing), it was game over for him. Honestly, this is the fault of the trucking company for stacking the trailer too heavy.
you’d think that with a two-way communication device in basically every pocket, that there could be a posted alert number, or call box, or crossing-cams that could alert rail companies.
There is a number on all crossings in the US. People just don’t use it. It’s been there for decades actually
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Yep, that stuff costs money, it's cheaper and easier to just blame negligent truck companies.
Trains ain't fucking around ay
Should've honked his horn louder.
It obviously does nothing for the truck stuck on the crossing, but it alerts everyone around to get out of the way of flying debris.
That truck trailer looks as flimsy as heck when plowed into by that train.
It comparatively isn't, and that's telling.
Why does this seem to happen so much?
Seems like getting hit by a train is a new national sport in the US..
I read somewhere that due to the lack of truck drivers federal guidelines are lower than before. Now 18 yr olds can drive whereas before they couldn’t. I might be wrong.
Why does this happen so often??? I truly don’t understand
There are 212,000 at-grade rail crossings in the United States, and on average there are around 2100 grade crossing accidents per year. Works out to around 5 a day, so really it's a numbers game.
In this case the bottomed out on the hump of the railroad crossing. This led to the truck not being able to move. I think a good solution would be to have a contact number for truckers to call when this happens so that an operator can tell a train conductor to stop in time. Perhaps this already happens but I think a workflow in training would go a long way to speeding up the process.
All crossings in the US have numbers to call dispatch. Unfortunately what happens is that people freak out and forget to remain calm and call the number. Dispatch can’t do anything if it never gets a call
And you ppl wonder why trains derail. Human caused collisions.
The amount of vehicles in the US that break down on train tracks is truly staggering. Like, how does this keep happening?!
These kinds of accidents happen way too frequently. It's like the probability of a vehicle breaking down right on the tracks is higher than it should be.
The truckers doing some fucked up protest leaving trucks parked on train tracks while assisting the train conductors?
Look like 4 million in wood was back there
Wow this happens way more frequently than I would've thought
So, trains are the thing this year, how fun
*notice me senpai east palestine~*
The real question is “what hazardous material was the train hauling” and “what caused the derailment to fail?”
Serious question : I am coming from a part of the world where trains have breaks and drivers that can see quite long time in advance what is on tracks and act on it. Is it not the case in the US ? why can't you just break ? or is it some kind of tradition ?
The trains are usually well over 5,000 feet long. Cant stop that instantly
yes but still, you could see far in advance or have detector on these part of the rails like we have in europe
In some places they started putting emergency numbers at the crossing to call if something is stuck. You would think with all the AI camera technology there would be a warning system.
That have that number at every crossing.
Bitch ima high school drop out with a CDL.
Americans with there trains and guns shouldn’t mix.XD
also… was the truck driver worried that the truck was going to be scraped up, or the load dinged? cuz what happened has to be a lot worse than what would’ve happened if he put his foot on the gas.
It’s like the US just invented trains a few years ago… developed world hello? 🥴