Stalled on the Crossing
You are westbound at 6:10 p.m. in January in a 2012 front-wheel-drive sedan with two passengers. The temperature has dropped to -6 °C after an afternoon of rain and the road is patchy ice. Ahead is a railway crossing with flashing red lights and gates, no attendant, and a blue sign on the post giving a 1-800 emergency number. About 80 metres beyond the crossing, traffic is backed up from a red light, and the car ahead of you has just crossed and joined the queue. A freight train's headlight is visible roughly half a kilometre to the north. You follow the car ahead, and because the queue has stopped, you end up with your rear wheels on the rails. When you try to move forward, the engine stalls and will not restart immediately. Your passengers are arguing about whether to push.
1. What should you have checked before entering the crossing, and what rule would have kept you out of this position?
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The rule is simple: never enter a crossing unless you can clear it completely, including the rear bumper, on the far side. The queue of stopped traffic 80 metres beyond the crossing was the warning sign, because a stationary line of cars can back up to the rails faster than you can move off them. Before crossing, look past the tracks and identify a space large enough for your whole vehicle and then some, especially on ice where your stopping distance is longer and your pull-away may be sluggish. The car ahead clearing the crossing proves nothing about your own exit. If the space beyond is not there, stop before the rails and wait, even if the gates stay up and the lights stop flashing. A train travelling at highway speed needs well over a kilometre to stop, so the protection has to come from your decision, not the train's brakes.
2. The engine will not restart and the lights begin to flash. What is the order of actions?
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Get everyone out first and worry about the car second. Open the doors, get all three of you out and move away from the vehicle immediately, heading at roughly a 45-degree angle toward the approaching train but well clear of the track bed, because debris from an impact is thrown in the direction the train is travelling. Do not stand between the rails, on the adjacent track, or beside the car. Once clear, call 911 and use the 1-800 number on the blue crossing sign, which reaches the railway's operations centre directly and can warn the train crew. Only consider pushing or restarting if the train is far enough away that you are certain, and only someone not needed for the phone call should try. A car is replaceable; three people standing around a stalled vehicle on an active line are not.
3. In a different case, the gates start to lower while your car is already on the crossing with a clear exit ahead. What do you do?
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Keep going and drive through the gate. The gate arm is designed to break away on impact, and the danger comes from the train, not from the barrier. Stopping under a descending gate puts you exactly where the train will be; backing up is equally wrong, because you cannot see what is behind you, the exit you came from may have closed, and reversing takes longer than driving out. Commit to the forward exit, accelerate smoothly but not so hard that you lose traction on ice, and clear the entire crossing plus a safe margin before slowing. The same logic applies if the lights begin to flash after you have entered: if you can clear the tracks, clear them. Only if your exit is blocked do you stop before the rails, and at that point the priority shifts to getting out of the vehicle and away from the track bed.