A woman has been killed after getting her foot stuck in a level crossing as a train approaches

[notalone]

uk.news.yahoo.com/skynews/20080329/tuk-woman-with-stuck-foot-killed-by-trai-45dbed5_2.html

How truly terrible. Yes she was very stupid for crossing when the gates were going down, but imagine the sheer terror she must have felt. I used to have recurring nightmares about this when I was a kid.

And how brave the men were who tried to rescue her

I have worked on engineering projects to close level crossing by replacing them with footbridge/bridges and underpasses. This is no mean feat and involve years of planning and is costly.

The level crossing system is safe if people follow the rules. A train can take up to a mile and a half to stop so it is very difficult for the driver to do anything once he sees someone on the track. Contacting the signalman might well be too late. Some level crossings have CCTV cameras on them so the signalman can normally see what is going on at those crossing anyway.

This is a terrible tragedy. I feel sorry for her family.

Horrifying. I think an awful lot of people don't realise that trains can't just stop like cars - as Spoo says, can take up to a mile and a half.

Footbridges and underpasses do cost an awful lot of money - and there are thousands of level crossings in the UK, would cost us something like the equivalent of the total roads budget for a decade to replace all crossings. My father opened an entirely new main line railway station in the 90s for the price of just one footbridge today (that's privatisation for you).

He once had a collision with a woman on a level crossing while he was driving a steam engine on the Severn Valley railway. She was killed, of course - no contest between several tons of locomotive and a Renault Clio.

LTH - I didnt know DH drove his trains this way (Ashford near me!!)

I had twin cousins and one of them was killed in June 2006 because she missed the last traon home and decided to walk along the tracks she was 17 this is the news article her Mum was driving to the station to pick her up a

Oh, how utterly tragic for everyone involved!

My heart goes out to her family.