<p>On the road from Northern VA to Charlottesville, there is a train crossing with a traffic light a little bit after it. When the light is red, the cars back up further than the train tracks. A few weeks ago when I was driving the route, I encountered the red light. I stopped before the train tracks because there wasn’t room on the other side. The car in the other lane drove onto the tracks and stopped because he couldn’t go any farther. Luckily, a train did not come, but the whole time I was thinking how stupid that person was.</p>
<p>This happened about 5 minutes from my home. My BFF’s little sister was friends with the girl. Our community is certainly upset by this and has lots of sympathy for the families.</p>
<p>My heart goes out to the family. Yes the young man made some serious mistakes. But no one deserved to die. A reminder to me, tell D about train tracks (we dont have many grade level in the suburban area I live in) and that 10 minutes later is not worth getting in an accident.</p>
<p>To those who said they don’t pull up close to the tracks because they fear a derailment: you are very smart people. We just had a train derail that was carrying ethanol. One woman died and several others were severely burned.</p>
<p>:(</p>
<p>It’s scary to see how easily life can be taken from someone.</p>
<p>My mother was driving on the highway when she was 19 and a car going the other way somehow flipped over across the barrier and landed a foot in front of her. She managed to swerve and avoid it, but she was shaken up by how close it came to landing on top of her. She’s been terrified of driving ever since, and whenever I drive somewhere alone now, she always calls me every 2 hours or so to be sure I’m ok. Annoying, but I can’t blame her for being worried after she experienced that.</p>
<p>When I was in High School Driver’s Ed back in the Ice Age, the instructor told us the story of one of his college basketball teammates, who apparently didn’t see or ignored the train signals as he tried to drive across the tracks. Of course, tragedy ensued. From the day I heard that story and to the present day, when driving I’ve always approached a grade crossing extremely cautiously .</p>