A train accident was narrowly averted in India after a Loco Pilot —as railroad engineers are called in India — of a train applied emergency brakes to save a trespasser. The incident shows the fast approaching train slowing down after the application of emergency brakes. The heart stopping video depicting the October, 2013 incident was uploaded to YouTube only yesterday.
In the first few seconds of the video , you can see how, as the train approaches, a man tries to cross over to the other side on his bicycle. Oblivious to the fast approaching train, he almost reaches the middle of the tracks before realizing that a train is just a few meters from him. He quickly manages to get off the tracks – but is unable to move his bicycle away in time. The train speeding at 130 km/hr (81 mph) destroys the bicycle. The train’s loco pilot applies the emergency brakes – which slows it down and brings it to an eventual halt (not seen in the video).
It is unclear if the man was hurt in the incident but he certainly did put the lives of several passengers aboard the train at risk with his sheer carelessness. There is a slight possibility of the train derailing when emergency brakes are applied – although very rarely has that happened. In a 2011 train accident in India, fingers were pointed at the application of an emergency brakes that caused a train to derail .
This video was captured by a Railfan (a trainspotter) from India and was uploaded to YouTube yesterday. According to him, the incident happened at Chola railway station in Northern India at around 7:40 a.m. local time. There was considerable fog on that day which could be one of the reasons the cyclist did not see the approaching train – but there was no way he could have missed the loud horn.
The train involved in this video was The Shatabdi Express – which incidentally happens to be among the fastest trains in India. This one was travelling from the capital New Delhi to a Lucknow, a state capital. India’s passenger rail network is the world’s busiest and carries over 24 million people daily.
Accidents at railroad crossings are common the world over and have claimed many lives. Last month, a California teenager was killed in a railroad crossing incident . Do you think the man crossing the tracks could have potentially caused a train accident and put several thousand lives at risk?
[Image via Raj Upadhyay/YouTube]
