5 ms·

When I worked for BNSF I heard a story about a guy crushed between two cars in the knuckle because he lost line of sight with his engineer and they were using h

by abduhl 8y ago

When I worked for BNSF I heard a story about a guy crushed between two cars in the knuckle because he lost line of sight with his engineer and they were using hand signals instead of a radio. They were able to keep him alive long enough to cover him with a tarp and bring his family in to say goodbye. He died immediately upon separation of the knuckle.

lawnchair_larry 8y ago
This is an old urban legend. Feel free to Google it, and you will see everyone who has worked near trains knows a guy who knows a guy who this exact thing happened to. Edit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-kiss/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-kiss/
- jacquesm 8y ago
  And excavator and backhoe workers too as well as heavy presses.
  - pixl97 8y ago
    Eh, /r/watchpeopledie has taught me that heavy equipment will murder you in a violent fashion if you don't respect it.
    - gknoy 8y ago
      I am amazed that such a subreddit exists, and yet cannot bring myself to watch it.
      - RankingMember 8y ago
        Yeah, life has enough darkness without me seeking it out.
      - cm2012 8y ago
        It also teaches you to never let kids near roads without hand holding or a leash.
    - jacquesm 8y ago
      I got within a hair. Stupid, stupid, stupid. In a nutshell: I was working with a backhoe that was older than I was, early 60's model and a hydraulic line developed a very small puncture, enough that I could see the line start to sweat. Instead of backing off I got closer to see if the drop I saw on the line was really oil or maybe water. Fortunately before I could reach for it but after I got way too close the line exploded. Blinded me for about 15 minutes completely, the oil got infused into the fabric of my sweater so deep that even 12 years later (yes, I hate throwing stuff away) you can still clearly see where it hit. And that was just a hydraulic line bursting, we're not into accidents with buckets and blades territory.
      - Noumenon72 8y ago
        A Reddit thread this week said if you put your finger over a leak in an oil line the pressure will drive it through your skin and they basically have to do surgery to scrape the pockets away from your bones.
        jacquesm 8y ago
        Yep. The pressure is insanely high, think waterjet cutter. Same with injectors of diesel engines. That sort of thing can lead straight to an amputation.
- pmyteh 8y ago
  That particular story is an urban legend, but fatal shunting accidents are sadly not. See https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/fatal-accident-at-grosmont-north-yorkshire https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/fatal-accident-at-grosmont-n... for a recent example (an amateur on a preserved steam line in this case; the mainline railway in the UK minimises manual shunting as much as possible)
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    No doubt exacerbated by the insistence on sticking with buffer and chain couplers despite the availability of safer alternatives for 100+ years.
- UnderProtest 8y ago
  It's also absolutely real and has been fairly common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_syndrome It's hard to understand why Snopes has this marked as a myth. The specific anecdote structure with the wife showing up is clearly a meme but that doesn't make it a mythical type of event. We're much better at dealing with this situation in developed countries now. It's still a serious hazard. Around the turn of the 20th century it was very difficult to handle.
  - ant6n 8y ago
    This seems to involve patients being 'crushed' for an extended period of time. Like more than 15 minutes, where tissue dies and basically creates a poison, that enters the blood stream when the patients get released. That doesn't seem to describe a situation like the ggp was talking about.
    - UnderProtest 8y ago
      Note that I'm addressing the Snopes conclusion more than the comments of the HN poster, except insofar as he/she used Snopes as a source. The key elements of the Snopes article are these: -Victim was crushed by machinery. -Victim is still alive. -Victim is not in much pain. -If the machinery is removed the victim will probably die quickly. -There's time to have them communicate with loved ones, a priest, whoever. There are literally videos of this situation on liveleak. It happens with trains, with elevators, with forklifts and freight, and most commonly with car accidents. The reason you don't remove the person at first is that they'll bleed out. The crushing material is an effective tourniquet so the person just sits there, alive and moving. By the time that emergency responders get there to address the blood loss crush syndrome is a definite possibility. The person is generally going to faint the moment the equipment is removed because of the sudden loss of blood pressure. If they don't die of blood loss then they may have kidney failure and die on the way to treatment. Everything about this is shockingly common except bringing the victim's family down to say goodbye or bringing in a priest. To suggest that this has not happened in any of the hundreds or thousands of crushing cases since the industrial revolution occurred is ludicrous. It used to be that companies provided housing for workers near the factory/trainyard/loading dock. It would often have been the case that the victim's family could get there before an emergency responder. The sense in which this is a "legend" is that people claim it happened to a friend-of-a-friend or whatever, and it's true that's an urban legend channel, but the actual events are documented except for the dramatic last kiss. I wouldn't even be sure that isn't documented. I just haven't seen it.
oh_sigh 8y ago
Do you get joy from just making up stories and pretending you were there? I've heard this story perhaps as frequently as I hear about people who go cow tipping. But then I ask and it back tracks 'Oh, did I say I went cow tipping? I meant I sat in the car while some friends went cow tipping. And no, I guess I didn't see any cows. And we were parked in a taco bell parking lot.'
- pixl97 8y ago
  /r/watchpeopledie tells me that yes, some people are out experiencing those stories.
  - oh_sigh 8y ago
    I don't doubt that it could happen. I doubt that it happened in close relation to OP. Hence the cow tipping analogy.

by abduhl 8y ago

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

This is an old urban legend. Feel free to Google it, and you will see everyone who has worked near trains knows a guy who knows a guy who this exact thing happened to. Edit: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-kiss/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-last-kiss/

jacquesm 8y ago
And excavator and backhoe workers too as well as heavy presses.
- pixl97 8y ago
  Eh, /r/watchpeopledie has taught me that heavy equipment will murder you in a violent fashion if you don't respect it.
  - gknoy 8y ago
    I am amazed that such a subreddit exists, and yet cannot bring myself to watch it.
    - RankingMember 8y ago
      Yeah, life has enough darkness without me seeking it out.
    - cm2012 8y ago
      It also teaches you to never let kids near roads without hand holding or a leash.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    I got within a hair. Stupid, stupid, stupid. In a nutshell: I was working with a backhoe that was older than I was, early 60's model and a hydraulic line developed a very small puncture, enough that I could see the line start to sweat. Instead of backing off I got closer to see if the drop I saw on the line was really oil or maybe water. Fortunately before I could reach for it but after I got way too close the line exploded. Blinded me for about 15 minutes completely, the oil got infused into the fabric of my sweater so deep that even 12 years later (yes, I hate throwing stuff away) you can still clearly see where it hit. And that was just a hydraulic line bursting, we're not into accidents with buckets and blades territory.
    - Noumenon72 8y ago
      A Reddit thread this week said if you put your finger over a leak in an oil line the pressure will drive it through your skin and they basically have to do surgery to scrape the pockets away from your bones.
      - jacquesm 8y ago
        Yep. The pressure is insanely high, think waterjet cutter. Same with injectors of diesel engines. That sort of thing can lead straight to an amputation.
pmyteh 8y ago
That particular story is an urban legend, but fatal shunting accidents are sadly not. See https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/fatal-accident-at-grosmont-north-yorkshire https://www.gov.uk/raib-reports/fatal-accident-at-grosmont-n... for a recent example (an amateur on a preserved steam line in this case; the mainline railway in the UK minimises manual shunting as much as possible)
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  No doubt exacerbated by the insistence on sticking with buffer and chain couplers despite the availability of safer alternatives for 100+ years.
UnderProtest 8y ago
It's also absolutely real and has been fairly common. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crush_syndrome It's hard to understand why Snopes has this marked as a myth. The specific anecdote structure with the wife showing up is clearly a meme but that doesn't make it a mythical type of event. We're much better at dealing with this situation in developed countries now. It's still a serious hazard. Around the turn of the 20th century it was very difficult to handle.
- ant6n 8y ago
  This seems to involve patients being 'crushed' for an extended period of time. Like more than 15 minutes, where tissue dies and basically creates a poison, that enters the blood stream when the patients get released. That doesn't seem to describe a situation like the ggp was talking about.
  - UnderProtest 8y ago
    Note that I'm addressing the Snopes conclusion more than the comments of the HN poster, except insofar as he/she used Snopes as a source. The key elements of the Snopes article are these: -Victim was crushed by machinery. -Victim is still alive. -Victim is not in much pain. -If the machinery is removed the victim will probably die quickly. -There's time to have them communicate with loved ones, a priest, whoever. There are literally videos of this situation on liveleak. It happens with trains, with elevators, with forklifts and freight, and most commonly with car accidents. The reason you don't remove the person at first is that they'll bleed out. The crushing material is an effective tourniquet so the person just sits there, alive and moving. By the time that emergency responders get there to address the blood loss crush syndrome is a definite possibility. The person is generally going to faint the moment the equipment is removed because of the sudden loss of blood pressure. If they don't die of blood loss then they may have kidney failure and die on the way to treatment. Everything about this is shockingly common except bringing the victim's family down to say goodbye or bringing in a priest. To suggest that this has not happened in any of the hundreds or thousands of crushing cases since the industrial revolution occurred is ludicrous. It used to be that companies provided housing for workers near the factory/trainyard/loading dock. It would often have been the case that the victim's family could get there before an emergency responder. The sense in which this is a "legend" is that people claim it happened to a friend-of-a-friend or whatever, and it's true that's an urban legend channel, but the actual events are documented except for the dramatic last kiss. I wouldn't even be sure that isn't documented. I just haven't seen it.

oh_sigh 8y ago

Do you get joy from just making up stories and pretending you were there? I've heard this story perhaps as frequently as I hear about people who go cow tipping. But then I ask and it back tracks 'Oh, did I say I went cow tipping? I meant I sat in the car while some friends went cow tipping. And no, I guess I didn't see any cows. And we were parked in a taco bell parking lot.'

pixl97 8y ago
/r/watchpeopledie tells me that yes, some people are out experiencing those stories.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  I don't doubt that it could happen. I doubt that it happened in close relation to OP. Hence the cow tipping analogy.