Don't surrender your common sense to your GPS

Yesterday, a commuter train hit a passenger car in Bedford Hills, New York. News reports state that the car's driver turned onto the tracks at the bidding of his GPS system, and mistook the tracks for the parkway that lay just beyond them.

Reports were unclear as to whether the man didn't realize that there was a railroad crossing at that location, or whether he thought he had safely passed through it when he made the turn onto the tracks, but I don't know that that matters. Photos of the wreck site show that the crossing is marked on each side with traditional cross bucks, wig-wags (the flashing red lights) and gates that lower over the roadway. A round "RAILROAD" sign appears before the crossing. To not realize that there was a railroad crossing he'd have to ignore the first set of signs and gates; to think he was through the crossing, he'd have to ignore the second set (those turned toward the traffic coming the other way - he wouldn't be able to read the signs, but those cross-bucks and the gate are unmistakable from either side). Admittedly, this all occurred after sundown, and the red lights at the crossing wouldn't have been flashing (time passed between his getting stuck and the arrival of the train), but a railroad-crossing cross buck is pretty obvious for what it is, and I have to assume that he had his headlights on.

I can therefor only guess that the driver wasn't paying attention. He surrendered his own judgment to the GPS unit, and when he heard it, or thought he heard it tell him to turn right, he complied without considering the advisability of doing so. And I'm not terribly surprised that he did, because we surrender a lot of our judgment to signs and traffic signals when we drive. The traffic light is green, and I proceed without stopping or even slowing to look for cross traffic. And this is the right thing to do, if we wish to use our roadways with anything approaching efficiency, but we have to be careful not to surrender too much, as this man clearly did.

It is probably our faith in signs and signals that leads us to believe that we can multi-task as we drive - we eat, drink coffee, fiddle with our CDs as we drive down the road. We talk on our cell phones, either using a hands-free unit or not. We shave. We put on makeup. Usually we get away with it, but incidents like this one remind us that we won't, always, so hang-up your cell phone, put down your CDs, and pay attention to what you're doing.

* No injuries were reported in connection with this accident
* The driver of the wrecked car and the company he rented it from are being held liable for the damage to the train and tracks, plus lost revenue and other expenses which are expected to total hundreds of thousands of dollars
* NTSB's database of railroad accidents