level crossing train crash

[schmidty]

Originally Posted by LindsayGT

1. More lights further back.

2. Create a bend in the road so that trucks are forced to drop back to say 60km/h. Quite easy to do but much more costly than boom gates.

Long straight roads only encourage the "cowboy" truckies to try and race the trains. The professional drivers would never do this.

Get a grip.

Long straight roads and cow boy truckies? Eff off. Yesterday i had to go to Robinvale. Had to go the back way straight up the calder and turn off just out of sea lake and across through manangatang. On that road, you'd be doing 100kmh, come around a bend in the road and literally have 100m warning of a totally unprotected rail crossing. Barely enough time to pull up, and no vision of the line due to trees and scrub. Approaching the tracks you'd be lucky to see 50m of track either side of the road. Now how the hell do you pull up 62 tonnes of B double when you dont even get enough warning that there is a crossing coming up. And we also rely so much on crossing signals working properly. On the way home i had to stop off just outside swan hill so had to come back the Murray Valley Highway. The rail crossing as you come into swan hill, is at an offset angle to the road, and with houses, factories, trees etc leading up the the crossing, you cant look ahead, and you cant see it out your left side without climbing into the passenger seat. If a car driver cuts it fine on train tracks due to not being able to see, driver error or signals not working, you've got about 5m of metal to drag across the crossing. Do it in a double, and there's up to 26m to get over.

$440,000 to upgrade a crossing to install boom gates. Done and road works lately? I dont think you'd have any change left over from the same wad of cash if you had to rip up and lay another 1km of highway either side of the crossing. They have done this between i think Wagga and cootmundra. The road crosses the same train line quite a few times, and runs fairly parralell, so they set it up so you're crossing it at 90 degrees to the tracks and you've gotta slow right down. Works well.

If you wish to start or keep branding truckies as cow boys, get your bum in 1 for a day and see what its really like, and what we have to deal with. Most of the truck drivers that give you the grief are the ones that never get out of the city. But its only a few that wreck it for all of us.

I'm not about to start racing trains mate. Nor do i wear a cow boy hat. We get hassled enough on the roads, and the new breed of drivers who think they are doing the world a favour by hassling truck drivers needs to change. I pulled out to overtake a car yesterday that had been doing 90 for about 15km. Pulled out, and he decided that he wasnt going to let me past. So after about 4km on the wrong side of the road and about 1km from the end of the straight, with him sitting next to my rear trailer axles, i put my indicator on hoping he'd finally let me in. Took him about 10 - 15 secs to let me back in. withing 3 minutes he was a dot in my mirror again as he has slowed back down to his 90kmh. Lucky we dont base our opinions of all car drivers on a dangerour few, just like its about time you stopped basing your opinions of all truck drivers on a dangerous few.

[schmidty]

Would love to see on the major highways some early warning system like at some big intersections with the big yellow sign with the flashing orange lights saying "prepare to stop"

Surely all thats needed is to put in some sensors a bit further down the line, and minor works as far as better signage leading up to it and some cabling to the signs. Surely couldnt add more than 50 - 100k to the cost of fitting an already signalled crossing.

[Nashy86]

Originally Posted by schmidty

Would love to see on the major highways some early warning system like at some big intersections with the big yellow sign with the flashing orange lights saying "prepare to stop"

I reckon that would be a great start, I've lived in Melbourne & Geelong for the last 4 years, but often go back to the parents farm in Gippsland, and see signs very similar to what you're talking about as I come into Pakenham on my way back to Melbourne, they're synchronized into a set of traffic lights in an 80 zone. Even in a car I find them very useful, because the amber on the normal traffic light gives you very little time to stop from 80 in a car (in the wet especially) let alone a truck.
These lights start flashing before the intersection light goes amber & i've noticed that if my car is pretty much level with them, doing 80 clicks when they start to flash, then the intersection lights will turn red just as I get to the intersection (to stop). I reckon they are great and would help a lot in the situation of the railway crossings we're talking about

[burnz]

truck's and train collide quite regular, typicly fraight train's
and now according to the government it's a tradgedy,
only because it was a passenger train.
but i know nothing will be done to rectifie the problem somthing
halfarsed nodoubet

[outback_ute]

Cam & Schmidty I think LindsayGT was referring to the few bad eggs not all truckies.

[Thornie]

Was talking to my old man this arvo about this accident, he drives through there regulary he has been a truck driver himself for nearly 30years, he said the skid marks from the truck are on the oppisite side of the road meaning that he could of been overtaking another vehicle at that point in time. and not watching for a train but concentrating on any other oncoming vehicles, whether its the case or not thats just the old mans opinion and his observations. i tend to think he has a bit of an idea being what you would call a wise man of the road with the near 30 years exp he has.

[Silver Ghia]

The entire media and police are blaming the truck driver, but one thing I'm still not clear about is whether he could see the crossing lights in the sunlight until too late.

I would think that crossing lights should be made more obvious from a greater distance because of the braking distances of trucks. Yellow warning lights seem a good idea, as long as they are co-ordinated properly. There are yellow warning lights for a traffic signal over the other side of a hill, near where I live, that arent co-ordinated very well. I pass the yellow signals that aren't flashing, at the speed limit, then suddenly on the other side of the hill the lights change to red!!

Some ideas go way over the top...overpasses at every crossing??? trains made to stop???

[Unco]

Originally Posted by Silver Ghia

Some ideas go way over the top...overpasses at every crossing??? trains made to stop???

yeah, i read that bit about trains made to stop too... i dare say it was a lapse of concentration and it was meant to be give way/stop signs for cars/trucks, not trains.

[fordfuntastic]

Im not sure of all the facts but I believe a police man said that there was a 50 metre skid mark! Remember the truck driver didnt hit the locomotive but the ECONOMY class carraige. Seems like it was travelling very fast to say the least.

What was the truck hauling? Was it empty or full of lead? One big weapon of mass destruction!

Poor people and those young girls what a shame, no time to think!

[Abacus]

It's a bit early to shoot the truckie here - nobody knows exactly what happened.

If it turns out that he hit the train because he was distracted while he was changing CDs or something stupid like that, fair enough, go after him.

However, a newspaper crowd went out to the crossing at about 1:30 the day after the accident and noted that at that particular time of day the sun caused visibility to be bad and they couldn't even see the train line from 50m away. There may be more to this than meets the eye.

And has been said above, Vicroads should accept some responsibility for the stupid design of the crossing. Having a highway cross a train line at an angle like that is just dumb.

[Flouro_Joe]

Originally Posted by 4Vman

A Victorian Police superintendant was just on the radio, he said "the great wall of china could have been at that crossing and it wouldnt have stopped it from happening"... obviously a bit of insight into how the Police are seeing the accident..

But it would have kept the rabbits out

[Nostalgia]

Originally Posted by Abacus

It's a bit early to shoot the truckie here - nobody knows exactly what happened.

If it turns out that he hit the train because he was distracted while he was changing CDs or something stupid like that, fair enough, go after him.

However, a newspaper crowd went out to the crossing at about 1:30 the day after the accident and noted that at that particular time of day the sun caused visibility to be bad and they couldn't even see the train line from 50m away. There may be more to this than meets the eye.

And has been said above, Vicroads should accept some responsibility for the stupid design of the crossing. Having a highway cross a train line at an angle like that is just dumb.

I heard a report about the sun at that time of day wouldve been shining through his windscreen and side windows.

[schmidty]

Originally Posted by fordfuntastic

What was the truck hauling? Was it empty or full of lead? One big weapon of mass destruction!

Or part of a supply chain that ultimately puts food on your table and millions of others, fuel in your car, and carts the raw materials that makes the road you drive on.

What about the train? How unsafe are they? Weigh from tens of tons to hundreds of tons. Take kilometers to stop, and seem to be regularly chosen as a tool for suicide. A v/line train driver i did some work for a couple of years back said they get 2 months off if someone commits suicide and they are driving the train. And that it happens fortnightly and sometimes weekly. So why not ban trains too? Because.... Like trucks, we rely on them to get us and our good near and far.

Its a freak accident. The millions of cars and trucks that would have crossed that railway crossing without incident, and now this. It highlights to us all that we all need to pay attention, and maybe its a lesson learned to all of us, one that we personally didnt have to learn the hard way. I know it's made me re think how much thought i give to rail crossings. Usually like most, take a glance and thats it. As tragic as this is, hopefully through this and the tunnel tragedy and various others, we'd all become more aware and alert and put in relevant safe guards to stop it happening in future.

[Unco]

well said schmidty. personal improvement is something that we should all take responsability of and not try to shift it to the government.