The greatest hits of the Houston light-rail metro

[ThinkPad]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc

[vanaya]

Can't wait for volume II . Only because it continues to happen!!

[tfflivemb2]

Wow, you'd think that if there were this many is such a short period of time, they would do something eslse to prevent these types of accidents...

[rkawakami]

Man, and I thought the Santa Clara County Light Rail had a bad history of accidents. As far as I know, all street intersections where the LR goes through is controlled by separate light signals for the cars and LR trains. Here, as in the Houston video, most of the collisions are from drivers turning left in front of the train, but they must run a red light to do so.

A similar system like Houston exists in Melbourne, AU. Their light rail system is (or at least, was, as late as 2002 when I was last there) constructed without signals or gates at some street level crossings, especially with respect to uncontrolled right turns (remember, they drive on the left so a right turn is one that crosses opposing traffic). Made a mistake there one night when I made a U-turn across LR tracks without checking behind me for a LR train .

[qviri]

Some impressively bad drivers there...

[vanaya]

I work 2 minutes from the medical center and travel to and from there quite frequently weekly. This video doesn't show the "close encounters" that happen more often. I think there is enough signs of where you can and can't turn. I think it just people that are unfamiliar of the area, because of so many one way streets in downtown and the medical center.