Sad to say, many people here in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area are frequently killed by Amtrak and CalTrain trains because of distraction and inattention coupled with the at-grade train crossings prevalent in this area which have never been upgraded since the 1960s when Silicon Valley was predominantly huge farms, orchards, vineyards and more between each of the cities on the Peninsula from San Jose CA to San Francisco CA and along the East Bay from San Jose to Berkeley.
Both the Peninsula and the East Bay are now a contiguous concrete and road megapolis from San Jose to San Francisco and San Jose along the East Bay where this tragic accident occurred in San Leandro as reported here:
The 18-year-old woman was having an argument with her step father over the cellphone and she neither heard nor felt the oncoming train or the shouts from a person warning her about the train -- she was hit and died.
Cellphone and texting distraction-caused "accidents" are becoming too common among walkers, hikers, bikers and drivers. People seem way too wrapped-up within themselves and their cell phones as you may recall from the 12-picture photo essay URL I recently posted -- don't scroll past the 12th picture if vulgar reader comments would offend you:
As I also posted recently, one of the daughters of my best friend was recently rear-ended by an inattentive texting driver while she was stopped at a traffic light. Though both cars were totalled per the insurance companies, incredibly no one was injured.
A 31-second video produced as a Public Service Announcement by the National Highway Traffic Safety group is sobering and highlights what frequently happens when using a cellphone while driving and it was recently cited in Gary Richards' ROAD KILL, er, SHOW column in Silicon Valley's San Jose Mercury News on April 13, 2014 in this article:
and here's the video:
More people need to see it in the hope they can be wearned-away from their Obsessive Compulsive Dysfunction love affair with cellphones.
Thad