ROAD RAGE

Crisp fall morning. Sunny, about 8:30 AM in the middle of lower Michigan. Temperatures climbing through the forties as the sun does its work. Dew on everything.

The pickup is doing about 70 on US 12. The driver is 19 year old Mat Foobat.

The train is going about 80 on the Amtrak line. The engineer is 50 year old Joe Wist.

Mat is in a hurry, for some 19 year old’s reason, and is driving with purpose and intensity. The traffic is light. On the two lane hiway he swings easily around the occasional slower cars. He has one hand shading his eyes against the rising sun, which glares through the smoke stained windshield He swings out to pass another pickup on a slight rise in the rolling country two lane, glancing at the driver as he does. Something nags at his mind and he flicks his glance back to the road, and picks out the glint of sun on another vehicle materializing out of a black water mirage. He quickly calculates that he can finish passing and get back on his side of the road and punches the gas to the floor. There is a slight sinking feeling as he realizes that the small four cylinder motor is already working too hard to give him passing gear.

He also realizes that the opposing vehicle coming downhill is closing rapidly with his small truck which is struggling uphill. Immediately several other thoughts fly unbidden through his mind, very fast. It’s not his truck, but his brother-in-laws. His license is suspended. He was speeding, again, and passing uphill. He’s a bit hung over. He hates his job. He’s about to have a head on collision.

But not today, he thinks grimly, and begins to edge back over. His eyes flick automatically to the rear view to verify he is past the other truck, and he is very shocked to find it still beside him. The rage and panic that fills Mat’s mind is incalculable as he realizes that this guy has speeded up purposely to prevent him from pulling back into his own lane.

The oncoming car, a large sedan he can now make out easily in the bright morning sun, is flashing it’s headlights. Mat finds himself playing chicken at 8:34 AM for no good reason.

Fuck this, his brain tells him, and fuck this asshole beside me. He slams his palm down on the horn and cuts over, forcing the other driver to slam on his brakes to narrowly avoid being forced off the road by Mat’s truck. It never occurred to Mat to brake himself, and fall in behind the guy he was trying to pass. The sedan shoots by, horn blaring. The other pickup is honking too, on Mat’s rear bumper. Mat can’t help it, and barks out a laugh. "Fuck you too!" he yells to the world at large, and rolls down his window to flip off the guy behind. He is beginning to enjoy the moment, and being alive.

This feeling erodes rapidly as he realizes, ‘it ain’t over yet’. Now this idiot he cut off is acting very weird, gesturing wildly and trying to pull alongside. Images of this guy blasting away at his truck (and him) with a 38 just pulled from under the seat become very vivid.

Mat scans the road ahead, and as he pushes down on the gas he notices that he never let it off – the pedal is already on the floor. He is traveling at 87 miles an hour. He begins to think that the other truck must have a bigger motor, since he couldn’t pass it earlier. A heavy feeling in his chest is modulating into a steady thudding. Vast amounts of adrenaline have not yet subsided from the passing incident, and the urge to fight translates easily into the urge to flee. But flee where?

Amtrak Engineer Joe Wist keys the mike: "Five out to Niles, Dave".

This is railroad slang telling the conductor to put down his coffee and get ready to make the Niles station stop. The tracks slope hard to the left approaching Niles on a downhill. Joe already has been drawing off some air, coming down from 79 mph. Everything is normal.

Mat’s route on US 12 is also sloping down towards Niles, and as he sees the railroad crossing he remembers a service road that runs by the tracks. Trying to adjust his speed so that he can make this turn but his pursuer can’t becomes Mat’s focus. At what he believes to be the last possible second Mat brakes hard and tries to drift the light pickup onto the service road. For an amateur it is not a bad effort – stones and gravel fly, the tires squeal, the rear end threatens to come all the way around but somehow Mat pulls it off. He is accelerating up the service road. And so is his pursuer.

The panic is rising again as Mat realizes that he is driving off into the boonies with a lunatic madman on his tail. His brain is yelling, ‘Why? Why?’

A half mile ahead an old railroad trestle bridge crosses over the tracks, and the service road ends abruptly. Upon seeing this latest dilemma Mat makes a fast decision: if he can drive his pickup through a four wheel drift he can drive it over these tracks and head back towards the hiway, and civilization, and away from this idiot whom (Mat is now sure) is intent upon killing him.

Mat cuts the wheel hard to the right and guns the motor.

The little truck obeys willingly and slams hard into the nine inch high recently re-spiked railroad tracks. The jolt almost knocks Mat against the windshield, but the front wheels manage to drop over into the gauge of the tracks. And the transmission lands solidly on the rail. And none of the four tires have much purchase on mother earth. Mat hears an unnatural somewhat tortured wailing and finally takes his foot off the gas, since the little truck is not moving.

Suddenly remembering his pursuer Mat glances frantically about and sees the guy has also stopped. He is watching , obviously waiting to see what will happen next. Mat seizes the moment to put the little truck in four wheel and lo gear and drive off the tracks. Except nothing happens. The wail comes back. Smoke comes off the tires, spinning at 100 miles an hour. Stuck, and with visions of the madman slowly walking up to the little truck to assassinate him, Mat glances over his shoulder. And sees his adversary backing slowly away, apparently satisfied with his work for the day. Mat drops back in his seat, his head falling weakly against the headrest. One word trickles out of his mouth, then another. ‘Shit. Fuck.’

He lifts his head. It is 8:38 AM. It is very quiet. Sunlight is slanting through the trees and a few birds are trilling. Mat shakes his head. Maybe life is ok after all. He is feeling very alive. His heart rate is beginning to slow. And warmth is spreading through his body. Now let’s get this goddam thing off the tracks. He rocks it forward. He rocks it back. No good.

He remembers his cell phone. Calls his sister who lives nearby. "Hi sis. I’m stuck on the tracks outside of Niles, here in the woods. Can you wake Bruce to come help me get his truck back on the road? Nevermind all that, just get him."

He gets out and stretches. The fall colors are really sort of beautiful. The temperature is near 50. Sunlight glistens off the dew which covers everything in gossamer rainbows.

Mat decides to get out the jack, and try to lift the front end of the truck, and then rock it back off the rails. Mat did not decide to call the local police and notify them that he was foul of the railroad tracks.

The conductor of train number 350, Chicago to Detroit, has his Niles passengers ready to detrain. The engineer of train number 350 rounds the curve approaching Niles under the old railroad trestle and can’t believe what he sees! Not a half mile ahead is a little pickup straddling the tracks! Without another thought he dumps the air, throwing the five car train into emergency. He leans on the whistle, throwing 80 pounds of air through the five tuned air horns atop the cab as several thousand tons of high tech train set begin sliding on the dew moistened rails at over sixty miles an hour. The automatic sanders begin shooting sand under the wheels at 85 pounds per square inch of pressure. The train’s ABS tries to release and re-apply the combination disc and compression brakes, as the sand alternately provides a bit of traction then turns to glass. The train does not slow very perceptibly. The passengers hear the muted explosion as each car’s main and emergency reservoirs vent their stored air to the atmosphere, applying the brakes at nearly 125 pounds per square inch of brake surface. But so much mass does not stop fast, and the train has begun to slide. The overall effect felt by the passengers in the body of the train is a very gradual deceleration. This is why trains do not have seat belts.

The 80 pounds of air flowing through the tuned horns makes a sound nearly as loud as a jet plane taking off, and this sound we all recognize reaches Mat’s ears. He takes his foot off the gas and hears the sound louder. Glancing first towards Niles, he sees nothing. Glancing out the passenger window he sees his worst nightmare. With ditch lights flashing their frenzied warning and the horn screeching bloody murder train number 350 is bearing down on Mat’s little truck at over fifty miles an hour. Engineer Joe, his hand frozen on the horn and every muscle in his body tensed to bursting is yelling at the top of his lungs, ‘JUMP! JUMP YOU ASS HOLE, JUMP!"

For an engineer, this is the most helpless feeling in the world. Time goes into slow motion. The force and weight of the rushing train seem unfathomable, as if it will never stop. It is a bit like stepping on your car brakes and having the pedal go straight to the floor. Your rushing auto suddenly seems as big as a house, and just as unstoppable.

For number 350’s conductor the unfolding events are all too familiar. The emergency brake application followed by unrelenting whistle can only mean one thing; a crossing incident. Except, there is no crossing here? He unconsciously looks out the window, expecting to see an airborne auto flying by. . .

For Mat, time also slows, and this is unfortunate. His overworked nervous system can’t believe it’s adrenaline time again, but it is. He begins to frantically try to drive off the tracks, even though a part of his mind already knows that is impossible. The timeslipping images start again; his girlfriend that left him last night, the disappointment in his sisters voice when he called her, the look on the other drivers face as Mat tried to pass him earlier. Finally Mat hears another voice. It is saying something important. Mat tries to focus. He hears it, and it is saying: "Jump, you asshole, jump."

Mat flings open the door and throws himself out of the little trucks cab .8 seconds before number 350 impacts the passenger side of the vehicle. The little voice has saved his life.

The incredible sliding dead mass of train number 350’s thirty five hundred horsepower locomotive plows through Mat’s little truck as though it wasn’t even there. It instantly accelerates the standing vehicle to a speed of nearly fifty miles an hour. The drivers door does a reflexive snap closed as the truck is hurtling away, hitting Mat’s departing knee in the process, shattering the kneecap in three places. Mat goes fetal as the train roars and screeches by barely two feet from his curled body. He is covered with fall leaves in many colors, and dust. Another quarter mile down the tracks the train finally stops. Where Mat is lying it is once again very quiet. He does not yet feel any pain. But he is alive.

"Emergency Emergency Emergency. Train number three fifty just struck an auto one mile west of Niles. It looked like the driver bailed out in time."

Joe goes limp in his seat, his head slumped on his chest.

Without taking the time to advise his passengers, the conductor throws open a vestibule door and heads back towards the scene of impact. He knows from times past that seconds may count.   He finds his assistant (an able and experienced fellow conductor who was closer to the rear)(and was wise enough to start taking a statement on the spot) already administering to Mat, who remains collapsed by the tracks. So the conductor, while talking to the Amtrak National Operations Center on a cell phone with one ear and the Conrail Dispatcher on the radio with the other continues back to the scene to determine track damage. And finds what is left of the little truck.

Impacts under 80 miles an hour actually leave recognizable remains. Impacts over 70 leave vehicles compressed, as if they came out of the crusher.

The little truck is off the right of way. The passenger side of the cab is now indistinguishable from the drivers side. What was a few moments ago nearly four feet across is now only two feet wide. The front wheels are scattered hither and yon. All the glass is broken or missing. It is as though the little truck exploded, which in a sense it did. The motor has somehow miraculously remained in the engine compartment, but is smoking pretty good. Pieces of the truck itself are scattered over thirty feet. There is nothing to be done, here. There is no track damage. The first cops arrive.

They are Niles PD and allow that EMS is on the way, but the accident is not in their jurisdiction. Michigan State Police arrive as Mat is taken away. The State Cop is an experienced veteran, and since there were no fatalities, and Mat was obviously trespassing, he turns the train crew loose with minimal delay. He takes a picture of the little truck (what is left of it) and of the front of the Amtrak engine. Aside from some paint smears and assorted fiberglass shreds there is no discernable damage to the engine. Motorists take note.

In twenty five years of railroading the average seems to be one ‘incident’ every six months. For a given train crew member. You might duck the odds for a year or so, and then the ‘things come in threes’ rule will bring you up to date in a hurry.