Stating the obvious

PennDOT puts out a little daily news/informational blurb that comes up in Outlook as the first thing you see after logging into your e-mail. Many days I just click over to my inbox without reading it, but today for whatever reason, I decided to take a look. The article was about safety around trains/railroad tracks.

Most of these tips were just plain common sense, and it's sad that they feel like they need to tell people about these things. Let's be honest here - if you, as a pedestrian or a motorist, wind up in an incident with a train, either you've done something incredibly stupid, or something bizarre and completely out of your control happened.

One of the points really caught my attention, however. This point mentioned when approaching train tracks you should be cautious and remember that "trains always have the right of way".

I'll be honest here - I'm not sure that I knew that, in the legal sense, trains always had the right of way on the train tracks. The reason I didn't know that was because it never really occured to me that right of way was at issue when you're dealing with an oncoming train, and you're either on foot or behind the wheel of a car. I mean, seriously, if the train didn't legally have the right of way, would it really change anything in practice? The train is much larger, has no ability to manuever off the tracks, and is in all likelihood going much faster - of course it has the right of way. Pretty much every of physics is working in its favor.

Right of way isn't really at issue in a situation where a collision would leave one party completely obliterated and deal just a glancing blow to the other one, unless there's catastrophic stupidity involved on behalf of the first party. The same principle holds for pedestrians in crosswalks. The fact that you had the right of way and the motorist who plowed into you is liable for your death isn't going to provide much comfort to your friends and family at the funeral, so you'd probably better watch for traffic anyhow, especially since those white lines hold only the authority, and no physical power, to keep you safe from on-rushing vehicles.

If the question of who has the right of way actually enters your mind when dealing with potential encounter with a train, well, to be frank, you're probably going to wind up winning a Darwin Award someday, even if it isn't this particular day.