A train collided with an SUV on the tracks near Downsview Airport earlier this spring while its driver was still at the wheel, according to new video provided by GO Transit.
Mid-May saw the event take place at a railroad crossing on Carl Hall Road, close to Sheppard Avenue and Keele Street.
The SUV can be seen driving toward a rail crossing in the about one-minute-long footage just as the gate closes, indicating an incoming train.
The SUV briefly comes to a stop but then pulls to the left in order to drive around the gate.
It appears to stop just before the tracks but within three seconds the train enters the shot and slams into the vehicle, pushing it out of the shot.
GO Transit says that the driver was not seriously inured in the incident and managed to walk away from the scene.
Their vehicle, however, appeared to be totalled in images shared by GO Transit.
The driver is also facing charges in connection with the incident.
“People look down, they don’t see a train or they think it is already past. What they don’t realize is it is deceptive. Trains come much faster than you think they will and going across tracks is not easy for cars especially, if you are going off the alignment. You can see how she goes around it and she gets stick or she panics, all kinds of things can happen like that,” Metrolinx spokesperson Anne Marie Aikins told CP24. “It can have deadly consequences under most circumstances. Really I don’t know how she was able to survive that, if you saw the car after it was totalled.”
Aikins said that videos like the one released on Monday rarely have a good ending, which is why they don’t usually see the light of day.
She said that GO Transit is releasing the video as “a stark reminder” of the dangers associated with ignoring rules at railway crossings.
“If the arm is down and engaged and the lights are still flashing but a train is gone by well guess what one might be coming in another direction and you just can’t see,” she warned.
Source_ globalnews.ca
