A few years back I attended a safety course that I was required to take before being allowed to work within the railroad right-of-way. The instructor was a former locomotive engineer that informed us that he had killed 7-8 people during his career. The suicides never bothered him that much, since that was their goal for the day, but the accidental ones kept him up at night. After working near the rails, I can tell you that a train moving at 80 mph is surprisingly quiet until it is passing you.
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How do you think they stretch them in the first place?
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That looked like a bad photoshop job in the video still.
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I like to think of this as a Darwin award for a particularly dumb car design.
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Occupation: Limo Driver
Name: Gene Yass
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Some folks have no concept of physics.
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All danger, safety issues, and paperwork aside, I imagine the engineer must have gotten a little bit of a thrill out of that.
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See, this is why Trump wants to defund Amtrak. They keep smashing into limos!
Anyway, I’m glad there was no derailment.
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Do you have any?
Freight trains can take a mile or more to stop, so you’d have to close the gates more than a minute before the train arrived. Drivers won’t be happy about that.
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Re: obstacle detection system
That’s actually being done, see link.
Although, arguably, in most cases barriers would do the trick. And making level crossings actually, well, level, wouldn’t hurt either.
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I wish. Unfortunately, I run with the French’s Yellow Mustard crowd.
It would have worked better if the ends of the limo had been braced against something sturdier than a signal pole. Without that, the level of damage to the limo seemed entirely disappointing.
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Even with that, would the notification have come soon enough for the train to stop? You can hear the brakes screeching early in the video; it just takes a lot of time and distance for a train that big going that fast to stop. That’s why trains have the right of way.
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Thanks - came here for this. (But that is not the ‘classic’ version. Perhaps it is not online.)
Happens regularly at level crossings in UK.
Safety over a minor inconvenience, every time.
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Those things are built like fire trucks. I didn’t realize until I drove one. That’s body on frame, and the frame is super strengthened to deal with all the flex from the ludicrous wheelbase.
More petticoats?
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Couldn’t find the proper one 
