Oklahoma family suing railway company after family member dies of heart attack

J

JonMyrlennBailey

Well-known member
They are suing the wrong organization. Or at least in many other countries that would be the case.
The local authorities are responsible for city planning. If they plan city services and road infrastructure in such a way that emergency services can't reach those in their service area, than the railways are not to blame.

I am sure the railways didn't just build a track there without asking, just like the railway crossings didn't just appear overnight. Bridges and viaducts also have been invented ages ago.

But hé, it's the US; sui-country. The rest of the world will just grab a bag of chips and watch the show.
 
Apparently, under Oklahoma law, trains are to clear tracks upon command of emergency services authorities. The conductor just closed the cab window and acted stupid. There should be technology to route ambulances and fire engines around crossings that are held up. Perhaps law enforcement should commandeer trains in emergencies as well.
 
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This is the United States and anybody can sue anybody else for most anything. Deep pocket entities usually just offer a settlement and move on, irrespective of the merits of the case.
 
No, they are not, but at the same time who's bright idea was it to make a neighborhood accessed by only 1 street separated by the tracks. I've not seen a map of the area but the article says it was blocking the 1 street to them. Why is there not 2? Single point of failure is silly in anything ever. 1 is none, 2 is 1. Yes its sounds like the conductor was being a (expletive) but surely the organization responsible for the roads around there (town, county, etc) should be added to the defendants no?
 
iowa wants to pass law limiting train length to 1.5 miles due to blocking roads. sounds great till where are the states going to it going to store the extra cars? where i live in illnois, rock island, they are geting ready to tear up tracks along river to build building etc. and also i would think in iowa even more trains in towns due to now if passed shorter length. not sure if they have really thought it through.
 
Chances are the tracks were there long before the neighborhood was built. The planers should have taken that into account and had more access routes to the neighborhood built for emergency purposes if nothing else.

Jack
 
Blocking the road for two hours isn't reasonable especially if it's the only access, I think they have a good case , if it was simply a train passing through it would be different , but have it sitting there for hours shouldn't be something they can get away with without consequences . Getting a helicopter in to fly out the sick person could have cost them many thousands , I've heard of people being slugged over 20 grand for air ambulances in the states.
 
Sometimes Air Ambulances just aren't available. I was surprised when my uncle, an internist, told me there were none available in the farm country around Rapid City, South Dakota. It was a situation, I think, where a farmer got injured or a heart attack, and died because they could not get him to a hospital in time. And I told him they might want to see if the nearby Elsworth AFB might want to form a cooperative effort. I don't know if they ever did. My uncle passed away years ago.
In this situation I look at Google satellite view, and I see from east to west a town, a set of tracks, and a river. I am sure a lot of people wanted a place by the river, even though they do not have a river road, so they are one-shot accesses across the tracks. I think the article even mentioned they knew that was a potential problem. Having said that, I also believe the train should have moved for an emergency. Maybe a 4WD could have gotten around the train, depending on the ballast, but it seems like the engineer did just not want to cooperate.
 
JonMyrlennBailey said:
Apparently, under Oklahoma law, trains are to clear tracks upon command of emergency services authorities. The conductor just closed the cab window and acted stupid. There should be technology to route ambulances and fire engines around crossings that are held up. Perhaps law enforcement should commandeer trains in emergencies as well.
Click to expand...

If you send a cop to board and take over my train, you can bet your behind that the cop is going to be physically removed from the train. It is still private property, and they are not trained in locomotive operations.
 
oknotsen said:
They are suing the wrong organization. Or at least in many other countries that would be the case.
The local authorities are responsible for city planning. If they plan city services and road infrastructure in such a way that emergency services can't reach those in their service area, than the railways are not to blame.

I am sure the railways didn't just build a track there without asking, just like the railway crossings didn't just appear overnight. Bridges and viaducts also have been invented ages ago.

But hé, it's the US; sui-country. The rest of the world will just grab a bag of chips and watch the show.
Click to expand...
Your argument is misguided. The problem is trains are becoming way too long. Many of these yards which haven't had any major reconfiguration since WWII are NOT designed to assemble or dismantle trains up to three miles in length. Yet that's what's happening in the name of PSR and cutting costs. Only problem is new liabilities are being created. Such as all of these trains being ransacked because they're sitting on the mainline due to inadequate space in classification yards. Trains must be double backed in order to accommodate the ridiculous train lengths we see today. This fouls the mainline and forces trains to wait on through tracks not designed for sitting trains. Combine that with very few sidings equipped to handle increasing train lengths and this is a creation of the perfect storm.
fourteen said:
iowa wants to pass law limiting train length to 1.5 miles due to blocking roads. sounds great till where are the states going to it going to store the extra cars? where i live in illnois, rock island, they are geting ready to tear up tracks along river to build building etc. and also i would think in iowa even more trains in towns due to now if passed shorter length. not sure if they have really thought it through.
Click to expand...
If that means trains are constantly on the move and not tying up traffic due to inadequate siding lengths or yard space, then so be it.
bnsfc said:
No, they are not, but at the same time who's bright idea was it to make a neighborhood accessed by only 1 street separated by the tracks. I've not seen a map of the area but the article says it was blocking the 1 street to them. Why is there not 2? Single point of failure is silly in anything ever. 1 is none, 2 is 1. Yes its sounds like the conductor was being a (expletive) but surely the organization responsible for the roads around there (town, county, etc) should be added to the defendants no?
Click to expand...
They're not the ones parking trains on mainlines without any regard to negative impacts on traffic. We saw this during the SP-UP merger meltdown in 1997 and 1998. That happened in Texas when an ambulance got stuck at a crossing and the patient died. I do recall the train was unmanned as well to make matters worse. While cities need to be smarter about how the build their cities, it wouldn't hurt for railroads to conveniently park trains on the mainline due to excessive length for a siding or nowhere in classification yards that can actually receive them.
pitkin said:
This is the United States and anybody can sue anybody else for most anything. Deep pocket entities usually just offer a settlement and move on, irrespective of the merits of the case.
Click to expand...
They'll also needlessly delay paying judgements by filing frivolous appeals simply because corporations don't agree with a ruling regardless of case's merits. This is why courts should impose a steep fee in the millions for multi-billion-dollar corporations to deter frivolous appeals. Now if the courts determine they have a legitimate argument to appeal, then they get their money back.
Bluewater said:
If you send a cop to board and take over my train, you can bet your behind that the cop is going to be physically removed from the train. It is still private property, and they are not trained in locomotive operations.
Click to expand...
I doubt anyone would PHYSICALLY remove an officer from a train knowing he has a loaded gun and would use it in a heartbeat. You must not know how trigger-happy cops are in America.
 
JonMyrlennBailey said:
There should be technology to route ambulances and fire engines around crossings that are held up.
Click to expand...
One news report that I saw on this situation was about a community which had only a single road access for all traffic in and out. That access road had a rail crossing which was sometimes blocked by a stationary freight train for up to several hours. Another community had its access road blocked for 24 hours on one occasion.
 
I don't know the correct answer to the situation, but who is going to protect the engineer when a law enforcement officer tells the engineer to run the train past its authorized position on the tracks? Does the engineer lose his/her job responding to an emergency request?
 
Did a little more snooping. The train was in a siding that was about 1.8 miles long. The Maple St, Noble,OK crossing is about 1.3 miles into the siding. There was probably no way for the train to clear the crossing and stay within the siding. Possibly they could have split the train. How would that delay affect the traffic on the main line, assuming it would take 30-45 minutes to separate and reassemble the train? How long would they have to keep the crossing clear? How close was the crew to timing out? When was the next train due?

Google maps - Maple Street Crossing

One AOL link states: "Several minutes passed before the train finally moved and the ambulance arrived at the Byrds’ house, Linda said recently, fighting back tears as she recalled the night she lost her husband of 48 years."
No comment on how long the delay was, or if the train was leaving the siding.

AOL link - says they did move the train

Other links state that hot shot Z-trains use that route. If such a train was scheduled through there, the railroad would not be happy if a lower priority train was blocking the main.
I never did find a mention of the length of the train in the siding.
 
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