Wed 6 Jun 2007
Off The Rails
Posted by anaglyph under In The News, Tragedy, Words
[8] Comments
A terribly tragic event happened in South Eastern Australia yesterday when a semi-trailer collided with a fast moving country train at a rail crossing. Many people were killed and many more hurt.
The news services have been running stories on it all day, and a nutty phenomenon is emerging: witnesses and other associated persons-of-involvement, when describing the scene of the disaster, are prone to blurt out the phrase “It was like a bomb had gone off!”
How many of these observers, I wonder, have actually seen the results of a bomb going off? Why are they using this comparison? Why, indeed, are they using any comparison at all? Surely, for the majority of these people it is most like a train colliding with a truck.
Well, maybe if you ever have a bomb go off in Sydney, people will exclaim “It was like a train hitting a truck!”
I can’t imagine how a truck hitting a train would be anything like a bomb going off. Maybe if they said, “It was like an incredibly slow ASM striking a target skin-on-skin without going high secondary!”
I think, sadly, that after 6 years of George Bush people are more used to thinking in terms of bombs going off than trains hitting things.
lets all pray for the survivors. ‘Prayers for saddest victim of Kerang’ in the front page of the telegraph.
Now on to something pratical. A gate would have been a good idea. I heard on the radio that the train drivers asked for a gate 3 years ago since cars were not stopping. Maybe its still in committeee ?
Sigh. Why can’t we spend money preventing accidents.
Hype. Commercial stations love it. Let’s see which one starts using it as part of their promos for being the best news channel first.
I like Jedimacfans response. If ever I see a bomb go off I’ll use that :-P
jmf: No, then they’re likely to say something like “It was like an asteroid hitting a building”!
Casey: Well, I can’t imagine that either, and I don’t think I want to try…
Colonel:… but I do like to try imagining a bomb going off under George Bush.
din: Country Victoria is weird like that. They seem to make it a point of honour not to have barriers. And also to try and outrace the train to get to the crossing. I’m sure that’s exactly what happened in this case.
LoL: We live in the century of the inane sound bite.
Well in “the States”, whenever there’s a tornado, eye- or ear-witnesses say “it sounded just like a freight train.”
Fair enough though, because one can suppose that they actually know what a freight train sounds like!