by radioman2001
The only safety device that came out of this accident (BTW I lived in Hawthorne for nearly 30 years and there was never any accidents at Commerce other than what has been reported here) is what is called a pre-exemption on the traffic light to allow traffic to exit the area by a forced green light on Commerce St at the crossing before train gets to that crossing. I see it work every morning as I go by and this is used at other crossings as well. Recently at Reader Digest Rd creating a traffic mess, and there are also cameras and sensors to detect cars on the tracks, Virginia Rd also has this.
The whole reason you cannot close Commerce St is there is no way for commercial traffic to cross onto the West side of the tracks without going about 2 miles out of the way through a residential area up and down a large hill then onto on lousy twisty winding road that goes past 2 schools.
One cannot be expected to understand why this person decided to sit on the tracks, but you can see that when you are trying to exit an area that was congested due to an accident as this can happen.
The whole reason you cannot close Commerce St is there is no way for commercial traffic to cross onto the West side of the tracks without going about 2 miles out of the way through a residential area up and down a large hill then onto on lousy twisty winding road that goes past 2 schools.
One cannot be expected to understand why this person decided to sit on the tracks, but you can see that when you are trying to exit an area that was congested due to an accident as this can happen.