Railway Crossings..

West said:
The Scottish are apparently considering a proposal where anyone is caught jumping an active crossing by giving them 9 penalty points (Quite right I think also!)
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That's seems rather lenient. I think a straight, automatic, no excuses 12 month ban + a hefty fine would be more appropriate.
 
A straight ban as far as I'm concerned though in conjuction they could reduce the time they go down before the train arrives.
 
Straight 12 month ban for anyone jumping the lights would be a suitable punishment IMO. Anyone who hits a train should be jailed. You're not only risking your life but potentially hundreds of passengers on the train. There's no excuse.

There's a manned crossing near where I used to live where the barriers were down by default and a man sat in a Portakabin who came out to raise the barriers by hand pumping what I presume was a hydraulic pump. There was a set of lights on it Red/Green to indicate if it was safe to cross. It must have cost a fortune to man it 24/7/365 and it would surely have paid for itself to install an automated barrier pretty quickly - there was obviously power present for the lights and some sort of signalling for the lights, but it's still manned AFAIK.
 
quite frankly i dont see why it cant be classed as dangerous driving

knowingly and deliberately putting yourself and others at risk of severe injury or death definately counts as dangerous to me.
 
matthab said:
I hate to say it and I know we all hate them but traffic enforcement cameras would do a much better job than training new drivers and making the driving test even harder.
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One of the few situations where I condone the use of cameras, the other being red lights.
 
I don't see why anyone would want to run the risk, for what, a couple of minutes at the most. There is also the problem for the driver of the train if they actually hit anyone, although they won’t be to blame or get in any trouble over it, it could still effect them mentally - feeling guilty, ect. And of course there is the delay this causes for the passengers.

The other way I see crossings is like natural selection, if they are stupid enough to ignore the red flashing lights and drive round the barriers then surely they are of no benefit to the human race.
 
iaind said:
They should fit the sort of spikes that stop you going the wrong way into a car park, so when the lights are on,you can drive onto the crossing but not off...... So if you jump the lights, you will be hit by a train and you will be killed. The problem would go away overnight
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This
 
I can understand why people do it, sometimes at level crossings you can be stuck for 5-10 minutes which is understandably annoying.

However people just don't grasp the speeds at which trains travel, you can look left and right and there be nothing as far as the eye can see and the train could be just around the corner and if it is it will get you before you can cross the junction.

It's like trying to cross a motorway on foot.

They should do something to reduce the waiting times. With all the speed measurement equipment we have these days it wouldn't be too hard to bolt one onto a railway signal a mile or so before the crossing and calculate the best time to close the gates such that the gates only close a minute before the train is due to reach the junction.

Failing that they could go with something similar to the car destroying rising bollards. Right now a lot of crossings are only partially gated so that you can still exit the junction after the gates have closed. You could put rising bollards in the gated section and have them rise if the vehicle crossing is going in the wrong direction. Normally I'm against those bollards but the train is going to do a lot more damage than the bollards, plus the above mentioned effect on everyone else involved.
 
This is easy. Quite clearly the people taking the risk are already borderline on gaining entrance to the Darwin awards. To prevent further occurances of them risking damage to public property, arrest them, strip them for body parts and re-use them giving someone else a new heart, lungs etc.
 
how can you say you can understand it.

What part of their tiny pea brain little minds does an assesment and decides that risking their life is a good risk to take in order to save 5 minutes. Its idiocy on darwinian proportions.

The cost of rolling out the rising bollards on every level crossing would be horrendous. Who would pick it up ?

there would be no need for them if people werent so damned stupid !
 
I spend most of my working life having to deal with stupid people (part of my job is tech support). You soon get to understand how they think.

Also the fact that 9 times out of 10 you'll get away with it doesn't help.

Yes I know that the other 1 time you will be very very dead, but stupid people don't think that far ahead.


"Understand" does not mean "agree with"
 
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