I saw this a few months ago but kept forgetting to post it…which is a terrible oversight since it has two themes we looove: people having close calls with trains, and the idea that something crazy happened to a person again, and it’s mentioned in the headline.
It says here that at the beginning of May, a woman drove through a railway crossing outside Garner, North Carolina, while the arm was down and the lights and bells were doing what lights and bells do when the arm is down. She got through the crossing, but slammed into a tree to avoid getting hit by the train. She was lucky enough to only suffer some damage to the front of her car.
That would have been mildly weird and kind of disturbing since how the heck did she miss the arm being down, the lights flashing and the bells dinging. But I guess I could chalk that up to some really good luck, and hope she would have a renewed healthy respect for railway crossings.
That’s not what happened here. Two weeks later, the same woman took a gamble at the same railway crossing. Although she didn’t do as well, she still wound up pretty lucky. I will stress that again, the arm was down and the lights and bells were working properly and she drove through anyway, or tried to. But this time, she got stuck and got lambasted by the train, giving her a new bunch of damage to the back end of the car to match the tree damage at the front which, I might add, was still there when she had accident no. 2.
Miraculously, she only suffered minor injuries, and tried to refuse medical attention but was taken to hospital anyway.
In my younger days I would have laughed uproariously and called her a moron. Now, I just wonder what was or is wrong with her. Hopefully she will steer clear of railway crossings for the foreseeable future…but that’s probably too much to hope for. Maybe I can hope that she will need some time to get a new car, so will be driven around by others who have more sense for a while.
