Amtrak train, truck collide in North Carolina

Norfolksouthern 37 the vehicle in question in this incident proceeded within the law accompanied by a police escort. Therefore if the driver was instructed by his company or the police in escort to proceed as he did then there can be no question of responsibility on his part. Road traffic vehicles have precedence over rail traffic on that crossing or any other when the signs and signalling are in their favour, that is the law

If the driver was instructed by his company or the police escort in error then it isnt Amtrak's fault either. As I said, Amtrak did not place the truck in front of it to be hit. There is no evidence that anyone did their job when deciding if that low body truck could cross a railhead be it the company, or the police escort, or the truck driver who should have been able to discern the danger of crossing this track with his load. Furthermore, there is always a contact for the railroad responsible for the crossing at the crossing (and there is certainly one at this crossing it can be seen in the images or on google street view). Events may have happened too quickly after the truck was already stuck, that is unknown, but anyone could have called the railroad if there was any doubt beforehand.

On a lighter note, I'd bet that the trucking company would love to have you on their defense team to somehow make this out to be the fault of the railroad. something that was already there and functioning before the trucker got his haul stuck on top of it. :)

I guess there would be many places you can try to throw blame, but the train crew and passengers are not responsible in any way. The only way the railroad could be responsible is for not having protection and signage at the crossing - all of that was there. I did notice that there are not any signs warning low trailers of the rise at the crossing. That would be a road signage problem and without going back to look I am not sure if this is a state or county aided roadway.

Look around your house or local supermarket and ask yourself, how much of the goods you see in front of you was delivered from the back of a truck and how much was delivered from the back of a train. In the answer you will realize the importance and predominance of the road transport industry.

With respect, I do not think you can appreciate the amount of freight that is transported via train in this country. The above may be true for you, but in this country there would be hardly any difference in what items were transported by train or by truck. I would wager that the US hauls more freight by rail than anywhere else. The above train involved in the accident is only one of very few passenger carrying trains here. This is a vast land and much more cargo is transported over these long distances by train than by road. A great deal of the road trailers and containers are on trains first. In a general sense, the trains haul the cargo to the hubs and the trucks distribute it. No I am not saying there are no long distance truck routes but when you consider that a single train in this country can haul what 200 trucks can, the choice is obvious. 40% of freight moved in the US is by rail, 28% by truck according to the US DOT. If I do in fact look around my house there is a good chance that most of the items were once on a train in the trailer of a truck before they were on the road headed for my local retailer.
 
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Look around your house or local supermarket and ask yourself, how much of the goods you see in front of you was delivered from the back of a truck and how much was delivered from the back of a train. In the answer you will realize the importance and predominance of the road transport industry.

Actually around 80% to 90% of it came on a BNSF freight train from the midwest. What you're saying may apply over in England, but here in the US freight rail is the dominant mode of shipping goods. It's only a few hundred miles in England at most, but in the US the distance from my hometown of Seattle to the major transport hub of Chicago is 2,063 miles. And that's not even close to the East Coast.

Sorry, but your experience in the UK freight industry just doesn't apply here at all. So please stop trying to start an argument before somebody decides to report you. It doesn't matter who is on the tracks, why they are there, or if it's intentional or not. The engineer did all that he could to prevent an accident, and there is no possible way of dispatch knowing before that the truck was there. We can't just monitor every crossing in the country.

Right, I'm taking this too personally. Please just take into consideration the major differences between the US and UK.
 
I might actually suggest that this thread is locked, seeing that things are getting out of hand. By this point a flame war is practically inevitable and honestly, I'm probably going to end up fanning the flames that he lit.

Can we all agree to let this thread die, for good?
 
The crossings are the problem, like you said, but it's weird how Amtrak doesn't get the money to remove them, and then people start complaining. It is kind of a Catch-22.

In this case, Amtrak doesn't own the tracks. They are contracted by the state of North Carolina to run the passenger service. This is similar to how the Downeaster works in Maine and Amtrak's other services in other states such as Indiana with the Hoosier. Where I live the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, which grew out of strictly running light rail, bus, trolley bus, and subway services just in the greater Boston area, owns most of the ROW within the eastern portion of the state. Where they run the commuter service, they are responsible for the maintenance and service levels in that portion of the system. If a freight railroad shares the line, they help with the maintenance, however, they operate within the MBTA timetables as they are a tenant on the line rather than the owner. Elsewhere where except where the MBTA has purchased lines, such as the new Springfield corridor and Worcester to Boston portion of CSX's B&A line, the opposite is true. On the strictly freight company-owed track, Amtrak is tenant and has to follow the freight schedule.

So how does this play out in the accident in North Carolina? It really wasn't Amtrak's fault and can't be held responsible for this. I'm not a lawyer so like everyone here this is conjecture. The railroad that does the dispatching, such as Norfolk Southern if it's them for example, should have been contacted by the hauling company.

Getting back to rail crossings...The FRA, http://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0001, provides financing for railroad improvement and grade crossing replacement. This I believe, like most state and government funding, is done as a matching grant. This means the state and local government has to also come up with a portion of the money to finance the project. Since the state isn't getting this for free, I doubt that they had any intention of putting anything more than they need into the rail infrastructure. Given that grade crossing improvements are terribly expensive this is probably even more the case.

John
 
My opinion: I don't think the crossing needed any kind of improvement. It looked pretty nice with even an overhead cantilever flasher, it just wasn't constructed to allow specialty trailers like this clearance to drive over it. This can't be avoided sometimes; not everywhere is level enough for construction so that a 30 wheel trailer with 6 inches of clearance can proceed.
 
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