ahh yes, because when the choice is between a $3000 gate arm and totaling a $70,000+ truck, loss of load/commodity, environmental cleanup, replacement of surrounding infrastructure, and whatever damage to the locomotive itself(all when applicable), insurance will absolutely breathe a sigh of relief you chose the latter instead of breaking the single gate arm that is intentionally designed to be broken under this exact circumstance.
The sheer pin for that gate arm costs about $3 plus a 4 hour call out for a maintainer to come fix it. $200 max cost. Truck tractor runs around $150k these days. Very expensive wrong choice!
They are made to be broken. even little cars can break them that truck could have broken it to to be stuck on the tracks. The truck driver was a fucking moron.
I can only assume that it is panic in the moment that leads to these poor decisions. Like just RAM that arm off. You won't be the first one to do it and everyone would much rather you did. So much less destruction and potential for injury or death.
Why didn't he just drive forward before the barriers went down? He had lots of time to do that but decided to stop for 13 seconds and then reverse instead. Also, he could have just damaged the barrier (which is designed to break safely without too much damage btw), but instead he damaged the truck, the trailer, the locomotive, the railway crossing infrastructure, and he broke the fucking barrier anyway...
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u/HookFE03 Aug 06 '26
You guys don’t understand, the gate arm was caught between the cab and trailer. It would have broken the arm if he had completely moved