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Driver abandons car at railroad crossing

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    the orange sticker indicates the driver was elderly


    A 78-year-old man abandoned his car at a railroad crossing yesterday morning after he failed to notice railroad crossing warning lights and got “stuck” when the boom gates came down:

    At around 8:45 a.m. on Friday, an express train on the Tobu Tojo Line, which was bound for Ikebukuro Station in Tokyo, rammed into a van that had become stuck on the tracks at a crossing in Fujimi.

    The driver of the van — a 78-year-old farmer from Fujimi — escaped from his car before the collision and was safe. A woman in her 70s on the train became sick and was taken to a hospital. No injuries were reported.

    The approximately 1,600 passengers aboard the train were assisted by firefighters to descend onto the railroad track and walked along the track for about 400 meters to nearly Mizuhodai Station.

    The service on the Tobu Tojo Line between Ikebukuro and Saitama Prefecture’s Ogawamachi stations was suspended until 11:30 a.m., affecting a large number of morning commuters.

    As noted in an earlier post about a similar accident, JR uses flimsy bamboo poles as crossing boom gates so that cars trapped on the tracks can simply drive to safety by snapping the bamboo.

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