In the case with the car carrier, the truck driver was outside the cab, looking at something. The crew said he saw them coming and ran like he<<. Not leaving the scene, just getting out of the way.

I was working with the BNSF utility guy in Centralia, WA, the September evening that a woman drove through the barrier in Bucoda to hit the side of a freight train engine. The train caught her Subaru and was dragging it along the tracks. She might have survived that, had not an Amtrak come along in the opposite direction.

I just recently had the engineer in my van that was driving the train that hit her. He said she just slowly kept coming, drove slowly through the barrier and the hit the engine right below his window. They had the whistle blowing the whole time. I asked if he could see if she was using a cell phone or anything, but he said he couldn't tell from his angle.

Since both of the mainline tracks were involved, all the trains going north or south had to be stopped. I could hear the Ft. Worth (TX) dispatcher getting a little frazzled, trying to tuck trains into sidings all along the route. The accident happened at 5 pm, no train moved until 10:30, and they weren't moving well until midnight.

Was she using her cell phone? Fell asleep? Heart attack? Stroke?

Sue