As someone who lives near trains, this just gave me an idea. Why don’t we have speakers located at each stop? Then, the conductor can trigger those directional speakers as needed. If those aren’t working, then they can hit the “wake up the whole neighborhood” horns.
Humans are idiots, and the whole point is to keep them alive anyway. They can’t claim they didn’t hear a blast from the train horn.
A few years back they were trying to improve train safety after idiots in Florida kept ignoring the gates and getting run over, so they started using horns again in my town
But the interesting part was the compromise. They decided a better safety option was to build medians at every grade crossing, so idiots can’t drive around the gates. No more horns again permanent infrastructure, nothing active or clever needed
They sort of already do that with the rail crossing dingy bells and lights, but both usually happen if the crossing apparatus is present. I think its required here?
On a side note, I had to take a weird back way home the other day, due to highway closure, and found a house that has its own small scale private rail crossing with the drop bars and dingy bells and lights and everything, due to the rail hugging the road on the wrong side for them. It was very cute.
As someone who lives near trains, this just gave me an idea. Why don’t we have speakers located at each stop? Then, the conductor can trigger those directional speakers as needed. If those aren’t working, then they can hit the “wake up the whole neighborhood” horns.
Humans are idiots, and the whole point is to keep them alive anyway. They can’t claim they didn’t hear a blast from the train horn.
A few years back they were trying to improve train safety after idiots in Florida kept ignoring the gates and getting run over, so they started using horns again in my town
But the interesting part was the compromise. They decided a better safety option was to build medians at every grade crossing, so idiots can’t drive around the gates. No more horns again permanent infrastructure, nothing active or clever needed
Most railway crossings should be grade separated. It’s more infra but removes chance for any human error (and horns)
They sort of already do that with the rail crossing dingy bells and lights, but both usually happen if the crossing apparatus is present. I think its required here?
On a side note, I had to take a weird back way home the other day, due to highway closure, and found a house that has its own small scale private rail crossing with the drop bars and dingy bells and lights and everything, due to the rail hugging the road on the wrong side for them. It was very cute.