by RPM2Night
The comment about not entering the track area until it is clear that you can make it atleast one car length PAST the track area is the same concept as it is with the law that you're not supposed to enter an intersection between two roads if you can not clear the intersection. I don't know what it is these days, but stuff like that happens all the time. I don't know if it's that people just don't care (thinking the world revolves around them), or that when people are being taught to drive that they just aren't being taught this information...or both. Atleast with blocking an intersection though, you are only delaying traffic, because the traffic is already stopped (in theory) when you are given the green light to go, but with entering a railroad track and not being able to clear, you have a train as mentioned before travelling at a speed well over what can be stopped before impact. Something else to consider, most engineers will wait until impact to apply the emergency brake. The thought process behind this is, if the engineer plugs it, he risks injuring passengers on the train by the sudden reduction of speed...and in a lot of instances, the car will have moved off of the tracks by the time the train reaches it..so in that situation it would be risking the safety of the passengers. In most cases, a train hitting a car will shake it a little bit, but it won't be a HUGE reduction in speed...as the car will basically shatter.
