4 ms·
Some of it is people driving down the railway track. It may be confusing at night (all the incidents I could find mentioned in the bottom happened at night), p
by Svip 7y ago
Some of it is people driving down the railway track. It may be confusing at night (all the incidents I could find mentioned in the bottom happened at night), particularly if there is a road junction immediately following the railway crossing, that you were supposed to turn on. Then an indicator to 'cross the railway, and then turn right' would be nice.
Although, I wonder whether US railway crossings can be hard to see at night.
- mhandley 7y agoOld-style railway crossings often included gates that closed across the tracks to prevent this happening. http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3VF4hWvjC3g/maxresdefault.jpg http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3VF4hWvjC3g/maxresdefault.jpg Is it really that hard for the railways to fix this problem with better modern automated gates?
- Svip 7y agoI've only seen those kinds of gates in Europe. Mind, I have not seen all US railway crossings, but I have seen a few, and none of them had gates like that. Plus, I think there is too little money in the railway network's budget to implement those gates, so asking navigation apps to do it for them is the cheap option.
- aaronmgdr 7y agoMost of the ones I have seen have gates (I'm in the US)
- kd5bjo 7y agoUS rail crossing gates tend to move vertically, and there’s never a barrier that crosses the tracks, only the road. Sometimes, they only block the road in the direction of travel which leaves an easy path for drivers to go around the gates if they’re feeling impatient.
- Freak_NL 7y agoWhat makes this primarily a US thing though? One would imagine that even if you manage to turn onto a railroad track accidentally, wouldn't driving on it immediately tell you that you left the comparatively smooth road surface?
- Svip 7y agoI am only speculating, but I think in Europe at least, there is a tendency to avoid railway crossings with rails that run parallel to another road. And if that cannot be avoided, the trains are required to run very slowly along those tracks. Part of the problem here is that the trains are unable to stop in time, because these are high speed tracks.