Strange Accident

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Tue Jun 3 08:33:37 EDT 2008


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


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