Wait til you hear about railroad crossings that don't even have "gate" technology 
The backup method is "train lays on its horn the entire time it crosses through the city and hops for the best" which makes it super miserable to live within a mile of those tracks bc they need to do that no matter what time of day or night it is
They do it regardless of whether or not it has a crossing. I used to live right next to a proper crossing and they still blared their horn. While it wasn't fun, it was easy to tune it out after a month or so.
Growing up next to a set of tracks, I purposely go out if my way to find places to live near them. I find it very comforting. The fact that places like that tend to be cheaper is just a bonus.
Yeah I love hearing the train go by at night. At my mom's current place it's like 30 feet from the tracks which was a little much but where I lived in high school it was perfect
Where i currently am, it's just down the road. Nice to watch from the front porch while having my morning coffee.
could be the autism but I never got used to it living next to one for years
Same, the autism can't let it go
I need to be at least a quarter mile away, preferably a whole mile.
Federal Railroad Administration rules on this are rather excessive in my opinion. To see how these safety rules can backfire look no further than Caltrain's morning rush hour. These are brand-new, quiet and smooth electric trains but because of the rules the bells and whistles are so loud it sounds like some sort of 5-alarm emergency! But no, that's just a normal morning. My heart goes out to any easily overstimulated people near railroad crossings.
There’s a station a few minute walk from my house. Horn or not they’re still audible.
I remember as a kid crossing Australia, we got stuck at a really long train crossing in front of us. It was visibly moving, but not very fast. We wound up having a picnic on the side of the road. It was an event when the end of the train came trailing along like an hour or so later.
Aren't quad gates the FRA requirement to not have to use your horn at a level crossing?
That was my childhood. A couple blocks from a big ol' railroad depot.
I live far enough away from a crossing that I get to just hear the Bwaaaaa in the distance. if the window's closed its hardly noticeable but if i want to hear train noises I just open it up and ill hear the wheels and squeaks and shit.
It's the simple pleasures
carbains cannot comprehend that there's a vehicle with even more momentum and even less stopping power than their wankpanzers. Even with an insane amount of warning a freight train wouldn't be able to stop in time, and when they do there's no guarantee they'd get going if they're near an incline or something.
One of the most hilarious ineptitudes I saw on 
was when I commented on some story about someone getting hit by a subway train, saying how fast a typical passenger car would have to be going to match the force of an NYC subway train going one mile per hour. I don’t remember the exact number but it was pretty high.
However, one guy responded that he just didn’t believe it, that there was no way something going only one mile per hour could have that much force. A bunch of people chimed in, tried to explain the F = MA to him, but no, it would not compute in his brain.
It's not accurate to say something going that slow does or not have that much force. It has momentum. Force is change in momentum, which happens over time. Something moving very slow but is very massive will apply a very small impulse (change in momentum) to a human because the collision with the human is elastic. If the human was strapped to a board and the board was anchored, the train would crush the human, but otherwise the human is going to be pushed out of the way, whereas something going much faster but with significant less mass is going to shatter the human because the elasticity of the human is not sufficient to disperse the force fast enough.
wankpanzer
I'm appropriating this
Angstpanzer is good too, I took it from @7bicycles@hexbear.net
Thanks! I lifted this from other people though, this is best ascribed to the greater active travel community
And even if they could stop in time, it would create an even worse accident
I think I just realized why they make computer science majors take physics
There is, it's called "an engineer" using the technology of "their own fuckin eyes" and "pulling the brake handle." But it still takes a long time for the train to stop, which is why you don't drive around the crossing gates.
It takes like a mile for a train to brake to a stop. The question is "do you think they can see a mile ahead?".
As Hexbear's resident train nerd, this tech actually does exist to my knowledge. Japan uses it extensively, which makes sense considering their very busy railways with frequent railroad crossings. Japanese railways use obstruction detectors like these (the little tubes): 
If the crossing is clear this sign 
lights up, letting the train driver know it is safe to continue. I believe if you intentionally disrupt the crossing you can be fined. This information may not be entirely accurate but it appears to be the case.
Here's a video on how crossings work in Japan.
Other things to point out:
-There are extensive grade crossings along the Brightline route and FDOT is absolutely car brained to the point of sheer lunacy, making grade separation something that should absolutely happen on this corridor
-None of this excuses the foolish actions of the fire truck driver
at grade crossings are pretty dangerous. the tech that actually solves this is called "grade separation" but it's unfortunately a lot more expensive so people complain about the cost.
Part of why Brightline isn't and will never be real HSR is because it still has level crossings.
they're building brightline west which afaik will be grade separated and true HSR.
Guilty pleasure when stories like this are on Facebook. Bunch of carbrains acting like it's super difficult to stay behind a barrier or avoid racing a fucking train.
Most preschool children understand that when the gates close it means that a train is coming and that you shouldn't go in there since the train is going to win a 1v1 against you every single time. How can you be so carbrained that you don't get that you should stay out of the way of a moving train?
"My car will win, my car is a fortress"
Perhaps this is unkind but a better solution would be to make the train more robust so the foolishness of the motorist does not harm the people on the train
The FRA tried this for ages and it just made American trains incredibly heavy, expensive, and unique. And of course they still had to come out of service after a collision.
Now we can mostly use European trains off the shelf, which is much better.
you mean the commodities on the train
dude is absolutely crashing out in the replies lmao
It takes miles for a train to stop. It's only be conceivably useful if someone say, broke down in the crossing at the exact time for that to work.
Although we have less of them, and they're more overworked, we have humans operating the trains who do that.
I recently saw a clip of a person on a mobility scooter driving around the gates at a train crossing. I was seriously impressed with how much the train was able to slow down. Totally saved that persons's life.
Love to have my train slow to a crawl because a bird landed on the crossing
And the six passenger trains behind it.
Throw in some AI powered blockchain NFTs and problem solved.
This tech apparently exists, and is in place in a few experimental crossings in Europe. It doesn't substitute the barriers, but makes sure that no one got stuck between the barriers.
Lol this guy's hero Leon's tech is known for slamming full speed into stopped fire trucks
To the individualistic brain, they associate more readily with a vehicle they could possibly drive, versus a train that they never would. So it makes more sense to them to have "tech" slow down the 500-ton train, rather than to have the same "tech" on board the smaller 2-ton vehicle to speed it up out of the crossing.
Bother the train? Screw that! If people in cars are determined to be dumbasses then they should just install Motivators a la Wipeout at railroad crossings 
Yes! I personally was thinking more along the lines of a TM-62 anti-tank mine with a time delay fuse that is reset once the vehicle drives off it. Plus adding sizeable cowcatchers to locomotives to clear the debris, naturally
I don't know what other takes this person has but this doesn't seem unreasonable.
They clearly acknowledge that trains can't stop quickly and are only asking why there isn't tech for earlier detection of obstacles. This is something I've occasionally wondered myself and whether or not there could be for instance unmanned small drone trains driving a couple of km ahead of the manned train feeding a video signal for the driver to know what is coming up.
Nothing about this post indicates they think cars ought to not have to stop at crossings, only the reality that obstacles for trains still occur in the real world and it is possible for us to build better safety systems if we actually want to.
I imagine it's because trains take SO long to stop that the tech would need to activate long, long, long before the barriers go down in order to have any meaningful effect.
There is the technology called grade separation but it is expensive and takes up a lot of space. It is necessary when mainlines or highways are involved but it shouldn't be necessary for branch lines and smaller roads. A gated level crossing is quite safe unless for morons in motorcars who drives around the gates.
honkin' honkey
For posting all the anonymous reactionary bullshit that you can't post anywhere else.
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