Has anyone ever been hit by a train and lived?

Question

Is it possible that if you stood in the road on railroad tracks and a train hit you, you might just be badly injured, but still survive? Or is it guaranteed that you'd die?

Answer 1

I've heard stories from a guy who worked for a railroad for years.  One time there was a group of people protesting for some reason about the train's speed as it went thru their town, and this lady sat down on the tracks with her legs across one of the rails.  You guessed it.  She lost both legs when she got run over. The woman said she thought the train engineer could see people at her location from a couple hundred yards where the train tracks came out of a turn in the woods.  People need to understand that trains weigh thousands of tons, and even at a reasonable 40 or 50 miles an hour, slamming on its brakes still takes about a mile to stop.  On another note, think about the engineers.  There are practically no engineers with more than a couple of years of service who haven't run over some idiot.  These guys are just working hard all day trying to make a living, and they don't need the daily guilt wondering if they could have done something else to avoid a catastrophe.

Answer 2

Getting hit by a train is not necessarily a death sentence, but, a lot of survivors wish that it had been.

I invite you to go to my profile page and access my 360 and, once there, read the blog post of 1-26-07, titled "Suicide at Red Bluff' and the post of 3-25-07, titled "The Thermos."

These are two such tales of survival, and they are both miraculous, if not interesting reading.

Answer 3

People do live. A few months ago, on Oprah they had 'Inspirational Special Guests'. One was a pretty girl who was in her late teens (I think). Anyway, a few years earlier, she was depressed and decided to kill herself by sitting on the tracks and waiting for a train.

She described what happened: said she was hit by the train, it dragged her body under, and dragged her some ways down. She said her hair got caught up in the undercarriage and ripped off. She said although she was aware she had other injuries, it was her hair ripping off that she could feel most.

Her other injury was easy to see: her body stopped at just below her pelvis. She had no legs. Hardly even leg stumps.

And she sat on that couch, saying she was happier now in her life than ever before (I find that hard to believe), now that she's changed her attitude about life.

Answer 4

Hey BlueAngel. I'm a conductor, and have had two accidents. Both resulted in minor injuries. The major railroads are very good to their people in situations like that. They send a replacement crew out right away - send you home for a few days. And someone calls every few hours to see how you're doing. Many very good employees that have been in accidents simply never come back to work, and I don't blame them. I don't know what I would do. I do know that if there's a cup of coffee in the engine when the train hits a car, the coffee won't spill. All the energy goes in to the car. I don't know what the stats are, but I'd guess about one third of the train - auto accidents are fatal. If you stood on the tracks, then definitely fatal.

Answer 5

Depends completely on how fast said train is moving.

There was a story last year of a woman coming out of a coma after being hit by a freight train. It clipped her and she flew a couple yards.

Answer 6

My uncle and his cousins survived a train wreck when they were teens.  They did not see the train as there were no signals at the crossing.  Thank God for my uncle's strength he was able to grab hold of the other 2 passengers and keep them in a postion where they would not go under the wheels of train until it stopped.  The car was totaled needless to say.

Answer 7

Well, a lot would depend on if it threw you off the to side, or you went underneath it straight down, and also the speed of the train. If it is going fast, you're unlikely to survive, if you're just standing still, as it'll probably knock you down in front of it, or parts of you, then roll over you, cutting you in pieces. Nice, huh? I've heard train/people accidents are NOT pretty to clean up - finding an arm here, head there, leg and torso over there...Ugh!

Anyway, there's no guarantee you'd die. You could live horribly mangled. So it is possible to survive a hit, but the circumstances would be unknown either way until it happens.