A 66-year-old security guard died on his way home from work Tuesday morning when his minivan rolled into the path of an oncoming train at Oxnard Boulevard and Gonzales Road in Oxnard.
The same tracks are used by the Pacific Surfliners that go north of Los Angeles, and the Coast Starlight. They could potentially have been delayed by this tragic accident.
The picture on the news article shows a Surfliner, possibly a train that ran after the Metrolink.
The frequency of grade crossing accidents in Southern California is way out of control. The delays caused actually deter prospective passengers.
Thanks for the follow-up information from California.
Agreed grade crossing accidents are a big problem, and mostly because although California has an excellent transportation system the people are still reliant on the automobile, that is why there are so many accidents.
And it's not just Southern California. CalTrain, the commuter operator between San Jose and San Francisco, has had its extraordinary problems with pedestrian and vehicular accidents with its trains. Some of those, unfortunately, were suicides.
The need to investigate the accident, when it is clear who was at fault, is what deters the passengers. It is obvious in this particular case that somebody in a vehicle rolled into the path of the train. How or why the minivan fouled the tracks should not be a reason to hold up the train, which clearly was not at fault. Some railroads, do however, require a crew change at the scene because of the trauma experienced by the engineer in being helpless to prevent the accident, and the conductor who usually is the first person on the scene to view the devastation to the vehicle and the injuries (or worse) to the people involved. That crew change might be why the train is held up.
California does have a problem with this. It also happens with some regularity in the Central Valley and on the Capitol Corridor. I was on a train this fall that had someone laying on the tracks in front of the train who we then ran over. The conductor stated it was the eighth time since Memorial Day that this had happened to a train he was working (the incident occurred in late September). Remembering that the Alameda County coroner's office uses clear plastic bags to hold the remains also causes this thread to bring back some unpleasant memories to me but so is life.
As SD said CalTrain does have a problem with pedestrians committing suicide using their trains. BART also does to a smaller extent.
