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Show Railroad Crossings are DANGEROUS . . . Reprinted from the Sidney, Novo Scotia "Post Record" An eloquent demonstration of how to get run over by a train was provided on Sunday night in Sydney, at the George Street crossing of the Canadian Canad-ian National Railways main line. The fact that a wreck didn't occur didn't lessen the effectiveness of the demonstration. A freight train was heading toward the, station. Its whistle had been heard but it was still out of sight around the curve. Then the warning bell at the George Street crossing started ringing and the pendulum pend-ulum signal swinging. Traffic which was fairly heavy on the street at the time, stopped short of the crossing. Up to that point, order prevailed. But, at the very moment the headlight oi the train came into sight, not far away, the driver of one of the halted cars took one look at it and estimated he could get across the tracks ahead of the train, and he did. This gave the driver of another car the same idea. He drove a car filled with small children and he got his precious load across the tracks before the train thundered past the crossing. That was all there was to this incident but one who witnessed it won't soon forget it. As a demonstration demon-stration of plain human cussedness and rattlebrained rattle-brained thinking it would be hard to beat. As long as the train was out of sight the drivers of those cars were content to wait for it, but the moment the glare of the headlight put a gleam on the rails, they seemed to regard that as a challenge to their fate. No one will ever know for sure how many motorists motor-ists have been killed or maimed for life by just the same sort of disasterous nonsense. The blaze of a locomotive headlight seems to attract them as a lamp does moths. They seem unable to resist it. Many escape, es-cape, but others do not. Sometimes an automobile will suddenly stall on the tracks and then it is too late. It is beside the point to say there should be no street-level railway crossings in the city. Of course there shouldn't but the level crossings are there and it is up to motorists to behave accordingly. To put all the responsibility of avoiding accidents up to the engineers of trains, is asking for far too much. It has been noted that the engineers observe all the responsibility of which they are capable. They obey the rules as to speed and whistle-blowing. That leaves the motorist with his own full measure' of responsibility. As for that driver of the car wherein the heads of several children were revealed momentarily in th beams of the headlight, one can only feel for him ; a profound disgust for his callous irrsponsibility as respects himself and fear for the future of his chil-v chil-v dren whose safety he so cruelly disregards. |