July 24th, 2008 → 3:47 am @ MReed // No Comments
For one truck driver, a routine day became anything but normal when he drove into a train. He had loaded his truck with a container and railroad ties and was headed out, driving along a small road on his way to State Highway 1 in Shreveport, Louisiana. As he approached the tracks, moving under five miles per hour because there are no signals or gates at the crossing, he looked to south and saw some railcars on a siding. No movement. Then he looked north and proceeded to try to cross the tracks.
The train engineer blew his horn but the driver had the windows rolled up and failed to hear the noise as the train went by, traveling at approximately 50 miles per hour. The front of the truck hit the train just underneath the engineer’s window.
The driver was lucky. If he would have been moving faster he might have been crossing the tracks right in front of the train, and everyone knows they can’t stop on a dime. His truck would have been hit by the locomotive and could have been pushed down the tracks or crushed. Because he was moving so slowly a much more potentially-deadly accident was avoided and there were no serious injuries.