Apply Brakes Before Sounding Horn?

(Inspired by the thread "hits car carrier" of approximately the same date in the Brightline forum)

Do (or should) engineers prepare to stop before sounding additional blasts (over and above the long-long-short-long for grade crossing) on the horn when seeing a stationary obstruction on the tracks up ahead?

In the Brightline crash, and other crashes I have seen on Youtube,, a truck was stalled for awhile on the grade crossing and therefore could be seen well in advance by the engineer, unless the train was rounding a bend.

Related: Could someone stuck on the tracks get a train to stop by taking a 5 or so foot wire, gloves and paperweights, and bridging (shorting) the two running rails? The intent is to cause block signals to go red. and a train could be stopped in many cases if it was not too close. (It is still necessary to run away from the track.)

Re attempting to short tracks: its been done, is probably illegal, and if done wrong could just make things worse.

Not as easy as you think. At 60mph the train is more than a mile away & requires more than a mile to stop. Need more info on the kinds of speeds Brightline operates at. Probably need a warning horn at each crossing where something obstructs it.

When there is an obstruction not sure how quickly dispatch can contact engineer. This was also true in the Ohio derailment. Shorting track may take too much time & not work. Mostly Brightline or any other RR needs you to be off the track 20 seconds before train comes. For Brightline maybe this needs to be 30 seconds or more.

As for apply brakes before sounding horn this may have to be done at every crossing. At speed & distance may not hear horn, may see nothing & may already be too late to stop.