I know what you, the intellectually challenged of the world, think every time you come to a train crossing and the gates are down and the lights are flashing. "Maybe, this time it'll work. Maybe, this time it'll be the train that loses. Maybe I will finally be the victor." Thankfully, someone just proved you wrong again.
Amazingly, nobody in the car received life-threatening injuries, according to local Houston TV station KHOU. And nobody in the train was injured at all.
In all fairness to the driver, the light rail lines in Houston are pretty new, so maybe they weren't used to the crossing. And that sort of thing wouldn't be an unusual occurrence in Houston, either, as the The USA Today pointed out a decade ago when these train things were first installed a decade ago:
There were public service announcements, community forums and safety classes to educate drivers. The sleek trains were equipped with strobe lights, horns, bells and whistles to warn motorists.
A test of the safety campaign didn't fare well. Five collisions between motorists and trains occurred while the system was working out its kinks before the Jan. 1 opening. Worried transit officials immediately launched more television ads. One had Metro Police Chief Tom Lambert growling, "So, what part of safety do we not understand?"
Nobody really knows the answer to that question. But since the MetroRail trains began running full time Jan. 1, there have been 18 more collisions.
But again, because this is Fairness Day and not Niceness Day, there is no Niceness Day, the world is a cruel and unforgiving place, those lights and those gates mean the same goddamn thing everywhere in the world. Plus, let's assume that this person is from the east side of Houston, where the trains are newest, and thus has had the least possible amount of time to get used to the thing that sort of looks like a big bus except it's much bigger and heavier and runs on a track and it's got metal wheels and you always know one is coming because it is the only vehicle on land that is accompanied by gates and light and bells when it gets close to a road, they still had an entire decade to get used to the damn things in other places around the city.
And, even though Houston is enormous, if you have never in the past 10 years left the east side of it, even though you have the finest freedom machine that God has ever gifted to Man (a car), well, I fear for you.
But seriously. You, Driver, didn't even bother truly trying to get around the train. You simply pulled out onto the tracks, and then actually yielded for the oncoming traffic, which was made of cars. But not the other oncoming traffic, which was made of Train.
This is just the biggest I Don't Know What in at least a five minutes.
H/t to Carscoops!