Uncertainties of Life
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2003 at 09:07 PM [GMT-6]

I drove to Odessa this morning to meet with a client. I'll probably post more about that later. As I entered the Odessa city limits, driving down Highway 80 (I refuse to call it by its new name: Business 20; it's been Highway 80 for the four decades I've been cognizant of road names and numbers, and it's too late to change), I saw an apparent convention of every emergency vehicle in Ector County in the grassy margin between the south lane and the railroad tracks. Traffic was fairly light, but what there was of it quickly slowed to a crawl, as rubberneckers did their thing. And their thing was staring at a crumpled mass of blue sheet metal plastered across the front of a freight train engine. Something had gone terribly wrong; someone had made a bad move, and paid the price. But how? The next railroad crossing was a good mile down the...oh. Right.

The train was comprised of about 60 cars, each carrying those double-decker freight containers that have become commonplace. The tractor-trailer tried to beat it through the crossing, and failed, with the engine scoring a direct hit on the passenger side of the cab. It's not easy to shut down 400 tons of metal moving at 50 mph, and the unhappy confluence moved a mile down the tracks before the engineer could bring it to a stop. I passed the empty flat-bed trailer at the crossing, where it had been neatly amputated from the truck. It was sitting a bit askew, but nothing about it really hinted at the true situation.

On my return trip, the clean-up was still underway. A crane was lifting the truck cab away from the engine. I had my digital camera at the ready, and rolled down the passenger window to take a few shots as I rolled by. The south wind blew an unusual-but-familiar odor into the car...it reminded me of welding...the acrid smell of burning metal. Of course. I had a vision of metal wheels shrieking along metal tracks, sparks flying as friction fought momentum.

I took a series of photos through the car window, thinking that perhaps I'd post them. But when I got home, I learned that the truck driver died in the crash. I deleted the photos.

It's a heavy price to pay for a momentary lapse in judgment. The usual murmurs have already started...the city and/or the railroad is at fault for having an unregulated railroad crossing. I'm sure everyone would agree that in a perfect world, with an endless supply of public funds, there would be no unregulated railroad crossings. But, then, in a perfect world, we'd always stop and look both ways.