Taiwan railway crossing malfunction and accident

[bikkuri bahn]

apparently recent storms led to rusting and subsequent malfunction of detection sensors.

[Mr Frosty]

Ouch, that was scary.

[JR 500系]

Holy crap! Someone could have gotten seriously hurt! That was dangerous! It was certainly luckily no one was injured...

[Ochanomizu]

Hello,

 

This is not only a mechanical failure, but also a human failure.  Surely you would look in both directions before proceeding, irrespective of the setting of the signal.

[trainsforever8]

wow.... this person really cheated death

[ToniBabelony]

Oh dear. I don't know how it is with Taiwanese traffic laws, but in Japan you have to stop before a railway crossing and confirm safety before proceeding. In Europe for instance, this is usually not the case. It could be that it's the same in Taiwan.

 

In any case, someone needs a new front end on the car.

[kvp]

 

In Europe for instance, this is usually not the case.

The usual crossing signal description reads: two flashing reds mean a train is approaching, a single static white means the crossing is operational, but a train might be approaching, so stop and check (greens would be used if the crossing is safe /secured with catchpoints/) Of course dark (no light) means faulty equipment.

 

In this case the problem seems to be that the car was turning onto the crossing from an angle, so i couldn't see the train from the front and even the rear view mirrors were pointing away. This is an unsafe crossing design and would need a line locked crossing gate (operated by locking all gates between two stations before starting the train, instead of block detectors).

 

ps: The usual way to handle this is that if the driver detects a faulty block circuit (if it's a combined cab signal one), the train must drop to 5 km/h until it completly leaves the damaged block or reaches the next station.