Drivers going home last night along Main Street were treated to the sight of a car that made its way from the lane next to the rail lines, to the rail lines themselves. And stayed there for about four blocks.
There was some hollering from pedestrians which apparently had absolutely no effect on the driver and his passenger in the dirty gray (silvery?) van. At first, most people probably assumed that this was a very lost out-of-towner, who didn’t notice he was on a rail line.
But even the train coming the other way, passing within a hair’s breadth of his car didn’t faze him.
The suspicion grew that what we had here was a cousin of the drivers who go the wrong way down a one-way street, because well, it’s just more convenient.
Fortunately, no train came up behind this car before he committed his final sin with a leisurely left turn across Main onto a side street.
Metro takes its share of lumps for car-train and pedestrian-train collisions. They really don’t need the help from drivers like this. We called Metro for comment and will give you an update when we get it.
Update after the jump.
Update: Metro spokeswoman Raequel Roberts got back after looking at our online
photo and talking to Metro’s chief of police. She expressed rueful
amazement that the driver had gone right over the big white traffic
buttons Metro puts in precisely to keep someone from getting on the
tracks. And that he didn’t somehow hurt his car when he did.
Then there’s matter of the red lights Metro has placed in the
pavement to warn drivers not to go there. Apparently this guy
interpreted them as landing field guide lights.
“You can do all the engineering you want and still people will do
something like this,” Roberts said. “It shows you can’t enforce or
engineer out people’s inattention to their driving.”
“The driver will be getting a letter from us,” she added.
— Margaret Downing
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2009.