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So thick / oblivious you had to be taught the lesson twice?

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  • #16
    Quoth zombiequeen View Post
    Hooray! I knew growing up with my school by the train tracks would teach me something!

    I think it's called that to catch the cow before it hits the wheels maybe? It was back in old-timey days where things were named differently.
    That sounds like a good reason! I know it was from what, the 1800's?

    Quoth mikoyan29 View Post
    I have a healthy respect for trains. Anything that can squash me in my car without too much damage to itself deserves that much. Last year, we had a pretty nasty accident as a carload of kids not only goes by the gate but around the cars stopped before the gate.
    Our commuter RR tracks parallel (for the most part) the major highway though south Florida (I-95). Most of the time it's less than a quarter mile from the highway,

    This means during rush hour (6:30am all the way until (9:00am) and the tracks are usually near a traffic light - but a hundred feet or so meaning a few cars can get in between the tracks and the lights and, of course, some impatient nutwad decides to stop on the tracks - this happens every rotation of the lights (but, of you don't then someone else will cut in front of you and they'll stop on the tracks).

    Several times a year we see pictures like this in the paper's website:



    (No one was harmed, they all had the brains to at least GET OUT of the car as the train came barreling down towards them). (I hope they also had to pay for the damage to the crossing gates, etc...)!
    Quote Dalesys:
    ... as in "Ifn thet dawg comes at me, Ima gonna shutz ma panz!"

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    • #17
      Quoth draggar View Post
      I understand the cow part of it, I don't understand the catcher part - it doesn't catch them and you don't want it to! it deflects them, it moves them, it saves them, it plows them...

      Alliteration. you always get bonus points for alliteration.
      Me to a friend: I know I'm crazy, you know I'm crazy, the zombies at the end of the world will know I'm crazy. Thus not eating my brain for fear of ingesting the crazy. It's my survival plan.

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      • #18
        Quoth iradney View Post
        Cow Saver sounds like a bank, Cow Mover sounds like a moving company and Cow Plower...well I don't even want to think about it!!
        Cow mover sounds more like Cow Mooer

        tho cow plow does sound funny.

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        • #19
          PPPPFFFFFFFFF this kind of thing happens ALL the time in Chicago. except that the end results are a little more bloody and messy
          I'm lost without a paddle and headed up SH*T creek.
          -- Life Sucks Then You Die.


          "I'll believe corp. are people when Texas executes one."

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          • #20
            Quoth Mytical View Post


            I tell you, to me it doesn't matter if that semi has the right of way. I WILL let it pass, turn, whatever. Yeah, it might not be right, but I've been behind the wheel of a semi. So..they get the right of way from me. I don't bumper ride them, I don't ride in the blind spot, and I will get the heck out of their way.
            This. I will always yield right of way to one of those tank like cars. I may not like it, but as a motorcyclist I am aware that a direct hit from an SUV = no more Lace. O_o
            People who don't like cats were probably mice in an earlier life.
            My DeviantArt.

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            • #21
              The "cow catcher" is definitely from 19th-century American practice. The canonical 19th-century American locomotive is a 4-4-0 with a long cow-catcher on the front buffer beam and an enormous spark arrester built into the chimney (due to burning wood as fuel).

              In the 20th century they tended to build bigger types of locomotive which wouldn't fit into the 4-4-0 pattern, but the cow-catcher usually remained.

              If a train runs over a cow, it's obviously bad for the cow, but less obvious is that the extremely large and strong leg bones are capable of lifting the wheels high enough to disengage the flanges from the rails, causing a derailment. This is more likely to happen to a lightweight vehicle (by railway standards), which would include the forward part of the classic 4-4-0 type.

              Modern diesel locos are usually heavy enough that they can get away with it. Also, instead of the classic cow-catcher, modern railway vehicles are usually fitted with an "obstacle deflector" in front of each leading wheel, which is literally just a strong blade of metal that reaches almost all the way down to the rail. This isn't supposed to deflect the whole cow (or car), just push away the more solid bits that would have gone under the wheels.

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              • #22
                Quoth mikoyan29 View Post
                I have a healthy respect for trains. Anything that can squash me in my car without too much damage to itself deserves that much.
                This, in a nutshell, is my travel philosophy. I apply it to me on foot, on bike, in a car etc. If they weigh more, I'm not gonna take any chances around them.
                Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -Groucho Marx

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                • #23
                  Quoth Syriilord View Post
                  This, in a nutshell, is my travel philosophy. I apply it to me on foot, on bike, in a car etc. If they weigh more, I'm not gonna take any chances around them.
                  Me too. Considering that, it was incredibly empowering to drive a U-Haul cross country. Though having two semis try to merge into my lane from either side AT THE SAME TIME on the NJ Turnpike was really annoying. I just hit the brake and let them deal with each other.
                  It's little things that make the difference between 'enjoyable', 'tolerable', and 'gimme a spoon, I'm digging an escape tunnel'.

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                  • #24
                    Same here. If given the chance, I will take my right of way, but if someone bigger (or even the same size) insists, they can have it. Waiting a moment or so longer won't be nearly the hassle as dealing with an accident.

                    ^-.-^
                    Faith is about what you do. It's about aspiring to be better and nobler and kinder than you are. It's about making sacrifices for the good of others. - Dresden

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                    • #25
                      I just look at trains this way : Assuming that he is going at a safe speed for city rail travel in a heavy residential/commercial zone -- If the driver can see me (at all), it's too late for him to stop in time, even if he slams on the emergency brake at full force. Even then, he risks derailment.

                      That alone is reason enough for me to give those bad boys a wide berth.
                      "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                      "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                      "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                      "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                      "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                      "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                      Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
                      "Our psychic powers only work if the customer has a mind to read." - me

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                      • #26
                        Then you have people like this guy. The stretch of tracks he was walking on...is nearly totally fenced off. Supposedly, the engineer made plenty of noise before the accident. However, the victim was later found to have his MP3 player up so loud, that it drowned out the horns. I was over that way the morning the guy was killed. I even saw the train and heard the horns moments before it happened
                        Aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines. --Enzo Ferrari

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                        • #27
                          Quoth Salted Grump View Post
                          ...most engineers in accidents like that tend to suffer from PTSD due to, well, turning a human into a bloody squeegie mark
                          I can't imagine how it would be for the directors, but I was on an overnight train from Malaysia to Singapore (for a Girl Scout trip, go figure) that hit a drunk guy on the tracks. Killed instantly. The train couldn't even stop until we a mile past the point where he got hit.

                          Apparently he was with some friends who tried to stop him but they were equally drunk and therefore hopelessly ineffective.

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                          • #28
                            A cousin of mine actually got hit by a train and lived. It did mess him up pretty thoroughly, go figure, but he was drunk out of his ever-lovin-mind at the time, so he probably landed limp. Thus mitigating the damage.

                            Oh, and my family always called that "stay out of the path of things larger than you" concept the "Right of Weigh."

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                            • #29
                              I have a friend who was clipped by a train, actually. Or as we twitted him about it, "tried to catch a train".

                              He was on the station platform, it was rush hour, he was in his Kendo armour which meant he was a bit larger in all dimensions than he usually is. He thinks his feet were behind the yellow line (I suspect not fully), but for whatever reason, he got clipped in the shoulder, left arm, and left side of the chest.

                              He's damn lucky. He got some impressive bruising, but no permanent damage.
                              Seshat's self-help guide:
                              1. Would you rather be right, or get the result you want?
                              2. If you're consistently getting results you don't want, change what you do.
                              3. Deal with the situation you have now, however it occurred.
                              4. Accept the consequences of your decisions.

                              "All I want is a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools." - Anders, Dragon Age.

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                              • #30
                                Quoth draggar View Post
                                Today I decided to go to BK for lunch
                                oh was that yours?
                                Sorry it was tasty though, and didn't have your name on it
                                Honestly.... the image of that in my head made me go "AWESOME!"..... and then I remembered I am terribly strange.-Red dazes

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