Following a double-fatality trespasser strike May 9 near Richmond, the news outlets and social media were awash in their ritualistic gasps of astonishment as to how two individuals could possibly have found they way into the path of a 79 MPH Amtrak train and been killed. Police and nearby residents noted that teenagers frequent the right-of-way, either as a shortcut to get from one neighborhood to another, or simply walk the tracks, earbuds connecting them with their source of entertainment, while disconnecting them from the reality of the peril lurking from behind—or in many cases, coming right at them.
Having been involved in a half-dozen fatalities during my 35-year career, and painfully listening to my 33-year-old locomotive engineer son recount the three trespasser strikes he’s endured in his comparably short 15 years with Amtrak, it’s hard to respond to well-intentioned folks, expressing their sympathy with families of those who lose their life, by asking them to have the same degree of empathy and compassion for the train’s engineer and crew. No one seems to realize that we are the ones who witness the last precious seconds of human lives, who scream helplessly in our locomotive cab, shouting curses heard by no one other than ourselves, simultaneously petitioning the Almighty with plaintive prayers to intercede through divine intervention to prevent the inevitable, while at the same time begging him to keep all wheels on the rails, the train in one piece, and our passengers and crew safe from injury. It’s something you never want to experience if you can avoid it.
It is said that when you die, your entire life flashes before your eyes. When your train takes the life of a trespasser, THEIR life plays out on your consciousness for the rest of YOURS. A continuous loop, repeating itself over and over again, in the middle of the day, the middle of the night. You torture yourself sometimes, wondering if there wasn’t something you could have done.