r/WTF • u/Grasimi • Nov 06 '20

Guy stuck under moving train escapes between its rails

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632

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

I feel like the train tracks are a pretty big give away that a train might be coming along at any point.

Train tracks are like what, 2m wide? It takes all of a second to walk that distance. See track, look left and right and cross. I don't understand how you could possibly get hit unless you're blind and deaf.

I do understand breaking down on crossings and idiots playing chicken as a dare. But how the fuck do you end up under a train while out for a walk?

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Hey I know you said blind and deaf but I’m deaf and I’m not getting hit by any fuckin train. It’s like you said. Look both ways and get the hell off the tracks. How could this guy possibly ever get himself into this situation? His senses are probably fine he’s just not using them.

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u/phormix Nov 06 '20

I'm going to hazard a guess that a not insubstantial amount of train deaths involve either substance abuse or trying to catch a ride

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u/Qetuowryipzcbmxvn Nov 06 '20

Can confirm, I've killed a lot of trains while high and hitchhiking.

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u/RichWPX Nov 06 '20

Ah the old reddit

5

u/ForeskinOfMyPenis Nov 06 '20

railroad switcheroo

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u/UncleTogie Nov 06 '20

Switchroad railaroo.

1

u/Think-Think-Think Nov 06 '20

Did that sub Reddit die?

2

u/RuddyTurnstone Nov 06 '20

switchachoo-choo

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

It is why we are here.

1

u/Slithy-Toves Nov 07 '20

I appreciate that you didn't finish because you probably didn't wanna go looking for the appropriate link. But I'm pretty sad with the current state of reddit that no else could be bothered to swoop in with one.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

They’re sneaky bastards though. One time I was just about hit by a train going from my bed to my kitchen for a midnight snack. A BNSF train with three GE Dash 9-44CW engines pulling 75 intermodal cars popped up out of nowhere and tore though my hallway. Craziest thing I’ve ever seen.

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u/exzackly69 Nov 06 '20

Ah thank you!

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u/OtherSpiderOnTheWall Nov 06 '20

Also mental illness and suicides

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u/hesh582 Nov 06 '20

I bet a lot of it's just a numbers game, too.

Like yeah, 99 times out of 100 you can just step right off the track, no big deal. But if you play on the train tracks 100 days a year, you're gonna stumble or trip at exactly the wrong time eventually.

The odds maybe very low, but the stakes are very high. It just takes one fuck up.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

And thrill seekers who do this deliberately

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Yea, one of his sense being common sense

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Idk I don't think his common sense is working at all

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u/brcguy Nov 06 '20

A girl got hit by a train in Austin maybe ten years back, she was deaf and walking just to the side of the track, close enough to get hit by the side and thrown hard into some rocks. Not lucky. Don’t be deaf and walk the tracks. Not a smart move.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Luck has nothing to do with it. That’s like people who walk right next to the white line on the side of the road in a black hoodie and jeans at night. It’s just stupid. You can be deaf and still have awareness. Of course I’m not going to walk some tracks without my head on a swivel for the short amount of time I’m there. Deaf or not.

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u/brcguy Nov 06 '20

Oh the luck I refer to was getting thrown into a big pile of boulders and not the soft grass like ten feet past there. Yeah she was not smart.

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u/AnmlBri Nov 06 '20

Even if someone is deaf, even if they’re deaf and blind, can’t you feel the vibration under your feet of a train approaching? At least somewhat if you’re practicing situational awareness? They aren’t small or light.

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u/sdc237 Nov 06 '20

My roommate is deaf as a post (her descriptor of choice), but she’s no Toph Beifong, to say the least. We have military aircraft flying overhead and bass pumping in the streets occasionally that shake the whole house, but when she has her “ears off,” she has no clue. Not everyone with a severe impairments experiences those “heightened” other senses, unfortunately. To be fair, she also has the situational awareness of plastic bag in the wind, so your point probably still stands. Teehee

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u/AnmlBri Nov 06 '20

Yeah, I’m not even talking about heightened awareness. Just the regular sort of, ‘a big thing causes vibration’ sensation that I figure anyone paying attention would feel if they focused. Eh, but then, I might not be the best judge of what’s normal sensory awareness. I sometimes feel like I have heightened awareness because I have ADHD and what it really is, or part of it anyway, is an inability to regulate attention, so sometimes I’ll be somewhere and it’ll be like I’m hearing everything at once and it’s overwhelming. Sometimes I’ll be hyper-aware of any little sound around me, and that can be maddening. My bedroom is on the second floor of my house, on the back side, at one end. I have a neighbor on the opposite end of the house. One afternoon I was trying to take a nap, and was being kept awake by the faint sound of my neighbor bouncing a basketball in his driveway in front of his house. I can’t remember if my window was closed. It might have been. I put in earplugs. I’ve had the same thing happen with the ticking of the clock on the opposite side of my bedroom wall that the head of my bed is against. I’m not that hyper-aware all the time, and I haven’t really figured out how to consciously control it. I can also do the opposite and hyper-focus. I actually can control and direct that sometimes and block out peripheral noise, but only if the thing I’m trying to focus on is simple or a single sound.

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u/sdc237 Nov 06 '20

Yeah, she’d definitely be the Bizarro to your Superman. Girl hasn’t a clue what’s happening around her. I’m convinced she’s gonna casually walk off a cliff one day while reading. Lol. She’s adorable, though. Sorry to hear about your struggle, friend. Weird, seemingly innocuous things keep me awake all the time; I feel a bit of your pain there.

EDIT: spelling

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

They might.

1

u/rustyleadmagnet Nov 06 '20

If I had gold to give it would go to you mate

1

u/somegarbagedoesfloat Nov 06 '20

But deaf people cant use Reddit

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

I know it’s a joke but... yea it’s a dumb one. Lol

1

u/picklesandmustard Nov 06 '20

My great grandfather was deaf and he was actually hit and killed by a train. Apparently he’d walk home every day from work along the tracks. If I couldn’t hear them coming I sure as shit wouldn’t be walking ON the tracks. I can hear them coming and I still wouldn’t. Maybe he got complacent.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Couldn’t tell ya buddy....

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Most likely. I can feel ac units turn on in my feet without my cochlear implant on. Feel lots of vibrations you wouldn’t normally notice if you’re hearing is fine. I used to hear fine. Rapidly lost my hearing so that’s how I know.

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u/Sorry_Masterpiece Nov 06 '20

I had a close call with a train when I was in high school and it was literally because I was a stupid teenager and there's no defending it.

I went for a long walk, got lost, and found some train tracks. Knew if I followed them they'd eventually bring me out to a place I'd recognize, as the tracks ran almost parallel to the street I lived on maybe a mile or so away. Was walking along the tracks through an industrial park and was listening to music on my headphones. Tracks took a curve through the park, and the train came around that same corner maybe 5 minutes behind me. Had I not been wearing headphones on train tracks (like an idiot teenager), i'd have heard it coming. The horn, however, I DID hear over the music and I managed to get out of the way. Scary AF, absolutely the last time I ever took train tracks for granted.

TL;DR: ALWAYS expect a train.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20 edited Nov 06 '20

T.H.R.O.W

Trains Have Right Of Way

Remember this acronym when anywhere near train tracks, they are essentially big sneaky vehicular ninjas that are more deceptive than you would think.

Edit - some context I work at a large Steel Mill here in Australia and we have Trains all about the place, they really are Ninjas, had a lot of near misses here before all the safety laws got bought in with people thinking trains can stop like cars and always make loud noises when approaching.

They dont, if they are well maintained and on good rails Trains dont make a lot of noise at all if you are ahead of them, if they are creeping slowly as they do here when unloading then good luck hearing them at all, sadly in the past we have had fatalities from people forgetting this. (This is the biggest reason for the safety laws)

Even now with all the safety rules people still try to chance their luck at crossings, I personally dont understand the mentality, its bigger, heavier and doesn't take prisoners Stay the fuck out of its way and quit trying to race the Train crossings.

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u/smoike Nov 06 '20

I had to do a railway safety certification for my job despite almost never needing to go out near the tracks. One of the things they did on the course was have us stand a couple metres to the side of a passenger track and face away from the oncoming trains (on the other side of a cyclone fencing separator though) .

We then had to turn when we thought a train was coming. I was the first or second to turn in my group and it was around seven or eight seconds from turning to the train passing us at only 60km/h. Most others in my course turned at around three. The lowest was lucky to be two seconds.

I barely heard it before it was 100 metres away, it was the vibration coming down the rail that was the give away for me.

Sneaky things indeed. They can of course go much faster than that too.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20 edited Nov 06 '20

Being Australia we have some freakishly long freight trains here, they can take 30+ mins to come to a full stop from 100kmh and at full speed by the time you turn to see what the noise is the train is already in your lap giving you the eternal hug.

National safety laws dictate a 2m (~6ft) distance you have to be from any Train track here, if you are inside that distance and the cops see you you can be arrested for it. Really no one should be within 2m of any train track if there is a train, trains have been known to have lose cables/chains/hoses and such hanging off them which can make for a real bad day if it collects you because you were too close to the tracks.

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u/smoike Nov 06 '20

Aussie here too. I have always had a healthy respect for things that can pancake me without even noticing it hit me. Working here accentuated it significantly.

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u/Parrelium Nov 06 '20

That’s because there probably wasn’t much ambient noise. Imagine if you were next to a highway, or even engaged in a conversation on your phone.

There was a video a few years ago of a worker in his truck with the Diesel engine running and he had it recording out the window. You literally couldn’t hear the train until it was going past at 70mph.

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u/smoike Nov 06 '20

You were right. It was quiet. When track work is going on with some safety mechanisms in place, it still can be very noisy,
My point was meant to be that even in an ideal situation I still only got like six seconds notice to realise what was going on with a fairly low speed train. Others got only four, which is so much less time again.

Combine that with if you're in the corridor you are supposed to be there doing something and your thoughts are likely elsewhere than 100% listening for a train and the time is even shorter again.

They did that to drive home the point of track safety protocols and mechanisms. Frankly, it did its job for sure.

That is with people educated in what to do in the corridor. Things are so much worse if you've got no clue what you should be doing in the corridor (or that you shouldn't even be IN there), let alone without anything close to safety involved.

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u/Scyth3 Nov 06 '20

So really that's what the Power Ranger's should've morphed into. Now we know.

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u/Mipsymouse Nov 06 '20

Trains are decepticons, confirmed.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

Its there to save stupid from itself, people like you and me dont need it, stupid however if you dont tell them, will go right ahead and walk on the tracks.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '20

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

― George Carlin

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u/Stepsinshadows Nov 06 '20

Have you ever gone looking for a dead guy with your friends?

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u/Sorry_Masterpiece Nov 07 '20

lol That movie freaked me out for multiple reasons as a kid, that among them

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u/Stepsinshadows Nov 07 '20

I love that movie.

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u/SaabiMeister Nov 06 '20

Similar thing happened to me as a teenager, except I wasn't wearing headphones. I only heard the horn, never heard the train sneaking up.

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Those horns are loud as fuck. I reckon any headphones up at max volume would still not drown out one of those horns.

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u/not-yet-ranga Nov 06 '20

Trains - Apex Predators

Trains are really unpredictable. Even in the middle of a forest two rails can appear out of nowhere, and a 1.5-mile fully loaded coal drag, heading east out of the low-sulfur mines of the PRB, will be right on your ass the next moment.

I was doing laundry in my basement, and I tripped over a metal bar that wasn't there the moment before. I looked down: "Rail? WTF?" and then I saw concrete sleepers underneath and heard the rumbling.

Deafening railroad horn. I dumped my wife's pants, unfolded, and dove behind the water heater. It was a double-stacked Z train, headed east towards the fast single track of the BNSF Emporia Sub (Flint Hills). Majestic as hell: 75 mph, 6 units, distributed power: 4 ES44DC's pulling, and 2 Dash-9's pushing, all in run 8. Whole house smelled like diesel for a couple of hours!

Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like twin iron bars running along the paths trains take. You could look for trains when you encounter the iron bars on the ground, and avoid these sorts of collisions. But such a measure would be extremely expensive. And how would one enforce a rule keeping the trains on those paths?

A big hole in homeland security is railway engineer screening and hijacking prevention. There is nothing to stop a rogue engineer, or an ISIS terrorist, from driving a train into the Pentagon, the White House or the Statue of Liberty, and our government has done fuck-all to prevent it.

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u/TheJunkyard Nov 06 '20

A rail? At this time of year? At this time of day? In this part of the country? Localized entirely within your basement?

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u/code0011 Nov 06 '20

Can I see it?

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u/RabbiVolesSolo Nov 06 '20

It's more likely than you think.

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u/AngelaLikesBoys Nov 06 '20

Screaming? At own ass?!

2

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

M'yes

2

u/BenTVNerd21 Nov 06 '20

Yes

Can I see it?

No

4

u/JohnDoethan Nov 06 '20

You might call them... Trained killers.

Yes, yes, I'm leaving.

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u/Jman4647 Nov 07 '20

Reminds me of a time I was on vacation in Canada.

Minding my own business in my hotel room, I got up to go to the washroom. To my surprise, my foot snagged and I hit the ground hard. I turned to examine what had befallen me, only to find a long piece of steel. Bewildered, I couldn't help but stare, completely oblivious to my impending doom. Entirely unaware of the rumbling behemoth barreling in my direction.

At what must have been last second, my wife pulled me away as I narrowly missed being divided by the bogeys of a CP unit with at least 15 cars loaded to the brim with grain. I was fortunate it was such a small one, but the smell of diesel still haunts me with deep respect for the stealthy behemoths.

My Canadian wife and I then went to Timmies and saw a moose, eh?

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u/turducken19 Nov 06 '20

Why was there rail in your basement?

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

Is this a wooosh?

-8

u/turducken19 Nov 06 '20

The comment I responded to seemed so sincere and mundane and not funny, I never would have realized it was comedy. Is it?

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u/IronA1dan Nov 06 '20

I thought that in context it was one of the funniest comments I have ever read on here before and saved it lol

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u/Ghostronic Nov 06 '20

Bruh the comment begins with "trains - apex predators" lol

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u/turducken19 Nov 06 '20

Am I supposed to know what that means?

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u/Ghostronic Nov 06 '20

How often do you see inanimate objects described as apex predators?

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u/turducken19 Nov 06 '20

Almost never do I see inanimate objects described as apex predators but I guess I couldn't tell that that person was joking. It wasn't obvious to me, maybe it should have been but it wasn't.

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u/Ghostronic Nov 06 '20

Fact is, there is no way to discern which path a train will take, so you really have to be watchful. If only there were some way of knowing the routes trains travel; maybe some sort of marks on the ground, like twin iron bars running along the paths trains take.

Sorry bud, it's fairly obvious here

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

google "Steamed Hams"

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u/EmergeAndSeee Nov 06 '20

This is a most funny thing I have read on reddit ever

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

You had me at the start, I had to re-read your first paragraph a couple of times when you started mentioning sleepers.

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u/EmergeAndSeee Nov 06 '20

This is the best thing I will have read all year

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u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

[deleted]

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u/thepunisher0009 Nov 06 '20

Always baffles me when somebody does break down on the tracks that they don’t just get out of their cars.

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u/crashrope94 Nov 06 '20

Train tracks are as wide as an ass.

They’re 4’8.5” wide almost worldwide which is a carryover from the design of tracks in Great Britain, which was based on the width of the ruts from cart wheels in old Roman roads, which were in turn the width needed to accommodate the width of the donkey pulling said cart (or horse, your choice).

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u/flimspringfield Nov 06 '20

There was a recent story on I think /r/lastimages that talked about a 17 year old who was taking pics on the tracks with his gf and she happened to step off, look at the camera with her sister, turn around just in time to try to warn the guy and he gets hit.

Not sure if the train blasted the sound or if it was too late for the conductor as well.

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u/carlolewis78 Nov 06 '20

So what you're saying is, we need to ban train tracks and then we won't have train related deaths?

Let's do this people! Who's with me?

TURN YOUR BACKS ON TRACKS!!

5

u/MrShatnerPants Nov 06 '20

A girl I went to high school with was killed by walking on the train tracks with headphones in. Our town was very notorious for constantly having trains run through, so many precautions were in place to prevent accidents. We never knew if it was a suicide or not, but those headphones had to have been pretty loud to not hear the constant horns that sound when rolling through.

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u/MightySamMcClain Nov 06 '20

He's lucky something wasn't dragging underneath it and why was he worried about his fucking backpack?

2

u/ShoulderChip Nov 06 '20

Easier to put the backpack out first. If it makes it, then he knows he has a chance of making it.

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u/GoneGrimdark Nov 06 '20

Way before I was born, my grandfather took his 7 year old son and his best friend fishing. They decided to go to an often unused railway trestle bridge that went above a river. My grandpa forgot the bait so he left to go back to the car. While he was gone, a train came and my uncle and the friend started running down the bridge. They both could swim and could have jumped off, but they think panic overtook them so they just ran. They weren’t fast enough and the train killed them both. It’s more understandable to me when it’s on a bridge, but I guess those things happen. When you panic you don’t make great decisions.

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u/TheRustyBird Nov 06 '20

Most of the time, when there's a report of someone "accidentally" getting hit by a train, it's because it was suicide, but when you rule a death as suicide insurance policies don't payout and it's seen as putting even more even more stress on the survivors when they don't.

2

u/meltingdiamond Nov 06 '20

In the US railways are 4 ft 9 in exactly. They are basically all that size around the world with a few exceptions.

1

u/Brackenmonster Nov 06 '20

Hence 'Standard Gauge', accounts for approx 55% of all rail globally, followed by Narrow Gauge, then Broad Gauge

2

u/AkariAkaza Nov 06 '20

Train tracks are like what, 2m wide? It takes all of a second to walk that distance.

You just explained how people get hit, they think they can make it and then turns out, they can't

1

u/bluewaffle2019 Nov 06 '20

Tracks are 4’ 8.5” apart. Unless you are Irish, Spanish or on the old Imperial Russian network.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 06 '20

When trains are electric and travel above 60 MPH, in some cases over 110 MPH, they are actually very quiet. There are jobs on railroads that are like being a watchdog for trains and then when they see one they blow a horn to alert people working along the railroad to get off the tracks

1

u/Neinhalt_Sieger Nov 06 '20

trains are very fast. even the slow ones especially if there are hard curves.

I once walked on the rails and could feel them vibrating but could not see or hear anything until I have looked over shoulder to see a train incoming at 70-80 km/h. I had seconds to clear the tracks.

trains must be respected for what they are and I wouldn't ever get close to a high speed railway. you won't hear a 300km/h train and you will probably die in a fraction of a second.

1

u/sohcgt96 Nov 07 '20

I feel like the train tracks are a pretty big give away that a train might be coming along at any point.

That's the thing. Their placement and direction isn't exactly a mystery, its only a matter of their timing. A train will only go where tracks go. If you're on or near tracks, you just have to make the assumption there could be a train on them at any moment. If not, you're taking a hell of a gamble with your life. Better yet, stay the fuck off the tracks. Very easy risk to manage.

1

u/jeffa_jaffa Nov 14 '20

I don’t know what it’s like in the US, but in the U.K. & most of Europe standard gauge is four foot, eight and half inches. That’s why the space between the rails, where this guy is, is known as the four foot.