This driver jumped the closing level-crossing gates in Sandymount, south Dublin, wrecking his Land Rover and boat on a trailer behind – as a train approached.
It perhaps doesn’t happen as often as you might think, but when someone hits a level crossing gate it can throw travel plans into chaos.
The clip below has been released today, Friday, by Iarnród Éireann.
It captures a series of incidents in which trucks and cars plough into level crossing gates as they’re closing.
In some cases the vehicles appear to be going too fast to stop, or the drivers simply aren’t minded to stop.
Other incidents involve motorists taking a chance to try and get under the gates before they close right down.
There’s even one incident in here where the gates were completely closed only for a cyclist to simply lift his bike over and run across the closed tracks; an act of madness.
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At least he didn't sprint to catch the closing gates and wipe himself out. But this rider's decision to jump the gates and walk across the closed tracks with a train approaching was pretty stupid.
Iarnród Éireann reports 51 cases so far this year of level crossing gates being clipped nationally.
That’s a sharp increase on the 35 incidents during all of last year; so the problem is set to almost double in 12 months.
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The company is responding to the problem by installing more CCTV systems at gates, especially in Dublin where the rail lines cross some of the busiest roads in the country.
The new cameras will be better quality than the existing ones.
They will enable the company read number plates on vehicles and capture good quality images of cyclists and pedestrians taking chances. So be warned!
You’d need to be crazy to take a risk anyway, but there is a better chance of being identified now.
It’s also frightening to think cyclists are sharing the roads with the drivers involved in these incidents.
Iarnród Éireann level crossing crashes
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