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Old 10-16-2018, 01:50 PM   #661
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The story also says the mother showed up with other children. It's quite likely that she was looking after those kids when the 6 year old got away, or putting on her jacket, or going to the bathroom, or anything else that happens in the morning. I can't believe someone would cry negligence when there's many things that could be going on at one time, and it takes a split second for a 6 year old to open a door and start walking.

It's interesting - on one hand, parents are getting a ton of criticism for being overprotective helicopter parents. On the other, if they provide perhaps a bit of freedom, or take their eyes off the kid for a second and they take off and it takes a few minutes to catch up, if something happens to go wrong, they are criticized for not keeping a super close eye on the child and letting something like this happen.
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Old 10-16-2018, 02:12 PM   #662
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It's interesting - on one hand, parents are getting a ton of criticism for being overprotective helicopter parents. On the other, if they provide perhaps a bit of freedom, or take their eyes off the kid for a second and they take off and it takes a few minutes to catch up, if something happens to go wrong, they are criticized for not keeping a super close eye on the child and letting something like this happen.
Some people delude themselves into believing we can live in a perfectly safe world where the only way a child could be hurt of killed is if an adult is negligent. The rest of us are guilty of letting those people dictate our behaviour.
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Old 10-16-2018, 06:29 PM   #663
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The story also says the mother showed up with other children. It's quite likely that she was looking after those kids when the 6 year old got away, or putting on her jacket, or going to the bathroom, or anything else that happens in the morning. I can't believe someone would cry negligence when there's many things that could be going on at one time, and it takes a split second for a 6 year old to open a door and start walking.

It's interesting - on one hand, parents are getting a ton of criticism for being overprotective helicopter parents. On the other, if they provide perhaps a bit of freedom, or take their eyes off the kid for a second and they take off and it takes a few minutes to catch up, if something happens to go wrong, they are criticized for not keeping a super close eye on the child and letting something like this happen.
I'm putting this out there and prepared for a flaming (and don't care about because frankly, I don't g.a.s about some wanker on a message board getting bent out of shape about it) but my kids all walked back and forth to school by themselves in grade 1 (they range in age now, from 24-27).

Granted, we lived in a smaller centre at the time (Innisfail) and there were no train crossings, but there was plenty of road traffic. For the first 2 weeks of school, I walked to and from with them, but after that, they were responsible for getting themselves to and from school. As the younger children started school, sure, they all more or less walked together, both to and from school, but there were times my youngest, in 1st grade, didn't always want to wait for her brothers so she'd meet up with them long enough to tell them she was going RIGHT NOW and she'd leave. *shrug* If we'd lived in the city, we may have done things differently, but there are a lot of variables even then, where we may have made the same choices.

I took a lot of crap even back then, for letting them walk, "at such a young age" but I blew people off for that. Maybe we just got lucky, or maybe it's that the kids knew the expectations, and we taught them, and they knew that if they weren't home by a certain time, mom would crawl up your backside if you screwed around on the way home. They also knew that I knew enough of the other/older kids/parents that lived on the route, or walked the route, that they'd be told on if they got stupid which no doubt helped. *gasp* We even let them go down the street to the park by themselves to play. We had a set of walkie talkies we used camping, that had enough range, so they'd take one of those with, but it was rarely turned on - it was to get in touch with me if something did happen, or to ask if they could go further down the street to so-and-so's house to play. They had watches and knew when to be home. Our kids had quite a lot more freedom than their peers, even back then.

My youngest was our bolter. Therefore, I watched her and we made certain provisions but even then, kids can make Houdini look like an amateur with their ability to be there at 2:09:45 and be gone at 2:09:46 and every one of our kids pulled that a few times, and they were "neurotypical" kids (ie. no special needs).

There is really nothing but sheer luck between the fact that my kids survived their walks back and forth to school at 6 and 7 years of age and this tragedy. It's every bit as possible that one of my kids could have been hit by a car or truck, of various sizes and been killed because at 6/7, the kids' size is definitely a factor up against a vehicle of any size - that's almost always a losing proposition.
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Old 10-16-2018, 08:13 PM   #664
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As a child the first time I sleep walked was in a motel in Winnipeg. Went right outside, peed off the balcony and locked myself out. I woke up outside at some point when the sun came up No idea how I go their. I was about 8. If it was winter it would have been very dangerous.

I also lost my daughter at a Seahawks game while she went to the bathroom and I didn’t realize there were two entrances. Luckily she went to security and found herself probably before I new she was lost.

In both these cases nothing bad happened and in the vast majority of times your kid gets lost for an instant or you leave you kid in a car or you just walk through a parking lot nothing happens. I would suspect that any parent has left their kid alone long enough for this to have happened.

Parents do their best.

People like White Out are lashing out because they are scared. They want to believe that this couldn’t happen to them so they blame the parents as that allows them to rationalize why their child won’t die tragically. So we should feel sorry for Whiteout that his fear of loss is so great it impairs his rational thought. That isn’t the best way to live so I hope he gets the help he needs to accept that despite people’s best actions Cancer, Car accidents and random chance will kill a small percentage of our children.
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Old 10-16-2018, 09:52 PM   #665
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Probably.
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Old 10-16-2018, 09:54 PM   #666
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Assuming this is true, you can all shut up now.

I have some inside information that I won't share but all I will say is this is true.

This is a tragic story and the parents are not to blame.
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Old 10-16-2018, 11:08 PM   #667
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I come from the perspective of an admitted helicopter parent. I came into parenthood thinking we would be similar to Minnie in a lot of ways. But it changed when he was diagnosed with a rare condition as a baby.

We deal with a lot of judgmental looks/comments for the decisions we make for the sake his safety. If he gets an injury, especially a bruise shows up, it looks 10 times worse than what caused it. We get judgmental looks then too.

I don't think most people mean to be judgmental, but it does show. The few times people ask what happened and we happily explain (at least I hope that's how we come across), there is instant understanding and a change in demeanor.

What I'm trying to say is when these sorts of things come up, my default is to forgive and assume there is more to the story than what an initial reaction may suggest, just based on person experiences. And looking back, it is not fair to think others should default to the same reaction as me either as I don't know their story.
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Old 10-17-2018, 12:14 AM   #668
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I feel like naturally I want to troubleshoot problems and find a solution. It’s not about blaming anybody, but looking for some way to prevent this from happening again. Anyway, one thing that keeps sticking in my mind is that the reports said the crossing arms were lowering and the girl panicked and couldn’t get back in time. Maybe I am out to lunch here, but it would seem to me that if a person ever found themselves between the crossing arms as they were coming down, they should be provided with enough time to clear the path tracks before the train comes. I guess I could see if the arms were down and you wandered into the tracks that you are taking a big risk, but if you are on the tracks already and the crossing arms start coming down, do you not have time to continue or double-back and clear the tracks safely? I have only seen the trains near stations and the arms come down quite a while before the train even moves, but that might be different between stations where there are at grade crossings.
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Old 10-17-2018, 07:08 AM   #669
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^ i can really only speak to what happens at chinook as that is the station i go past regularly, but i feel like there is a lot of time between the arms coming down and the train passing thru the crossing at chinook.

to me if she was at chinook and had cleared the arms just as they were coming down, seems to me that she should have lots of time to clear the tracks.
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Old 10-17-2018, 07:18 AM   #670
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Yeah, Chinook and the downtown stations are the only ones I frequent with any regularity. I know at Chinook the arms are down for a long time before the train even leaves, but that is also right at the station and not like where the incident occurred in between stations. I realize there is a balance between not holding up traffic for longer than necessary and safety, but I do wonder if this was some elderly person or with mobility issues, would they have been able to finish crossing in time.
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Old 10-17-2018, 08:42 AM   #671
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Yeah, Chinook and the downtown stations are the only ones I frequent with any regularity. I know at Chinook the arms are down for a long time before the train even leaves, but that is also right at the station and not like where the incident occurred in between stations. I realize there is a balance between not holding up traffic for longer than necessary and safety, but I do wonder if this was some elderly person or with mobility issues, would they have been able to finish crossing in time.
Even at the at-grade road crossings, there is time to clear the crossing, especially at the 162nd crossing where there is a pedestrian refuge between the LRT and CP lines. What design and timing don't account for, and realistically can't, is an unaccompanied 6 year old with special needs getting confused and not knowing to either stop in the safe are provided or just continue across the track with no train on it to clear the entire crossing.
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Old 10-17-2018, 09:20 AM   #672
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it would be interesting to know how much time there is between the arms starting to come down and the train passing. i would ahve to think that the engineers allowed lots of time for a person with mobility issues to get across assuming they don't fall or get caught up in the tracks somehow.
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Old 10-17-2018, 09:38 AM   #673
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You have a lot of time. First you have the lights staring which has your typical yellow light timing, then the arms take a second or two to lower, then you have a few more seconds until the train goes by.

I wonder if better lighting at the crossing could have given the train operator the visibility to stop in time as this accident unlike most was a person on the tracks.
Most are people walking into the tracks and the train hits them without an opportunity to brake
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Old 10-17-2018, 10:03 AM   #674
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Downtown along 7th Ave. from the time the light goes from "walk" to a red light is about 5 seconds (if the countdown clock is accurate). That's enough time if you quicken your pace to get across, if that light just changed when you stepped out on the crosswalk. Obviously in that situation the best move is to not try to cross, but if you had mobility issues and were on the crosswalk already then you could have a problem.
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Old 10-17-2018, 10:07 AM   #675
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Would live feed cameras at the crossings piped to a monitor in the train operators booth help? Even an extra couple seconds of brake time could make a difference in some cases.

I guess it wouldn't make a huge difference if most of these fatalities are caused by people trying to suddenly run across at the last second, but maybe it would here where someone was stupefied in the crossing.
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Old 10-17-2018, 10:33 AM   #676
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i was thinking perhaps the technology used in vehicles to warn of an impending collision could be used in c-trains although it would have to be modified to look further ahead.

however, i would think that at the end of the day the stopping distance required to stop a moving c-train will be a barrier to avoid hitting a pedestrian
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Old 10-17-2018, 11:34 AM   #677
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You have a lot of time. First you have the lights staring which has your typical yellow light timing, then the arms take a second or two to lower, then you have a few more seconds until the train goes by.

I wonder if better lighting at the crossing could have given the train operator the visibility to stop in time as this accident unlike most was a person on the tracks.
Most are people walking into the tracks and the train hits them without an opportunity to brake
We're talking about a 6 year old child here with special needs...who might never have walked across an LRT crossing before.

I don't think we can expect a child of that demographic to behave as an adult. Hence, would more lighting, longer wait times etc really help?

This is a tragedy, a horrible accident, and I don't know if much more could be done to prevent something like this in the future.
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Old 10-17-2018, 10:46 PM   #678
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We're talking about a 6 year old child here with special needs...who might never have walked across an LRT crossing before.

I don't think we can expect a child of that demographic to behave as an adult. Hence, would more lighting, longer wait times etc really help?

This is a tragedy, a horrible accident, and I don't know if much more could be done to prevent something like this in the future.
I was thinking more lighting may have allowed the train operator to see the child and stop in time. It’s a long straight run into that intersection.

I agree that changing the pedestrian interface wouldn’t have helped in this instance.
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Old 10-17-2018, 11:53 PM   #679
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it would be interesting to know how much time there is between the arms starting to come down and the train passing. i would ahve to think that the engineers allowed lots of time for a person with mobility issues to get across assuming they don't fall or get caught up in the tracks somehow.
I live by an at-grade, between stations crossing, so decided to see what the timing was like.

The lights flash and the audible alarm starts going.
15 seconds later, the arms start to lower. They took 5 seconds to lower.
The train thundered through at the 60 second mark. It took 2 seconds to clear the crossing
10 seconds after the train, the lights and alarm shut off, and the arms went up (taking 5 seconds to rise)
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Old 10-23-2018, 02:01 PM   #680
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Anyone know what’s going on at 36 st Marlborough?

Tons of police everywhere. Didn’t see any smashed up cars. Hearing rumours it was a pedestrian in the tunnel.
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