Strange Accident

[NW Mailing List]

Nathan,

It's my understanding that the lawyers will look for absolutely anything 
the engineer failed to do correctly, and claim that it was the cause of 
the accident.  Obvious things like speeding or failure to blow the horn 
(the requisite 20 seconds) or ring the bell over the crossing are of 
course points against the engineer.  I've also heard that speeding at 
any time prior to the accident, if the lawyers find out about it, will 
be used to paint the engineer as reckless.  Also, heaven forbid one of 
the lights on the locomotive, or any portion of the crossing protection 
isn't working properly.  I suppose some diligent lawyers also figure out 
that not all the trumpets on a horn will always blow.

Of course, none of that matters one whit in my opinion, considering that 
a person HAS to actively put themselves in the path of an oncoming train 
in order to be killed.  Unfortunately, it seems that personal 
responsibility has been discarded in todays society.

Fortunately, a lot of locomotives are being fitted with RailView, which 
has been used very successfully to prove that the horn was blowing, the 
bell was ringing, and the gates were down when the idiot -er.. 
plaintiff- drove around the gates onto the crossing.

NW Mailing List wrote:

> What I can't figure out is how some of those idiots get away with Suing 

> the Train Engineer and WINNING!!!!! Its about as stupid as the guy with 

> the RV that put it on cruise and wen in the back to make a pot of 

> Coffee... Wreaking, and so on...

> 

> Nathan

-- 
Kenneth Rickman - krickman1 at carolina.rr.com
Salisbury, NC

"You're a bubbling wealth of useless information!" - Holly Whitten