In 2005, 485 individuals were killed on or near railroad tracks while “taking seemingly harmless shortcuts to or from work, school, or elsewhere,” Warren Flatau, a public affairs specialist at the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) wrote yesterday.
Tara Rose McAvoy, in death, has become another grim statistic and a reminder to people nationwide that walking around railroad tracks isn’t safe. In Austin, Texas, a young woman’s promising life was cut short in a tragic, senseless, and completely preventable accident.
As a new day dawns over a grieving town, people are left wondering, “Why? Why was she there in the first place?”
Deaf people have been much praised for their exceptional skill in picking up vibrations so slight they’re imperceptible by hearing people. Was it this fatal confidence in this near-supernatural ability that led Miss McAvoy to walk along the dusty tracks, punching away at her pager for the last time?
It may be hard to believe, but hearing people have difficulty perceiving an oncoming train, too. That’s why trains are equipped with whistles, horns, and bells to warn people to get out of the way.
Vibrations do travel much faster through steel (as in rail tracks) than they do through the air, according to Ron Jodin, a professor of physics at Rochester Institute of Technology. But he cautioned that people probably wouldn’t be sensitive to them, even if they were standing on the rails themselves.
Depending on the speed of the train, once the vibrations are strong enough to be felt, it’s probably too late to react.
Another RIT physicist, Alan Entenberg, concurred, writing, “I would not trust my own senses to pick up vibrations from a train track before the train came to [sic] close..I don’t think the vibrations which can be felt occur until it’s almost too late to respond.”
And trains are apparently getting quieter. Mr. Flatau from FRA pointed out that the tracks “are increasingly constructed of continuous welded rail eliminating the tell-tale ‘clickety-clack’ sound associated with…trains. Railroad equipment itself is increasingly engineered to operate more quietly.”
Trains are quieter; tracks don’t transmit as much vibrations as before; and people can’t reliably feel them until it’s too late. Deaf and hard-of-hearing people are not exempt from this rule.
Miss McAvoy wasn’t, and neither was Justin Barnett, a student at Kansas School for the Deaf, who was killed in a similar accident in 2000. Senseless, preventable deaths.
Tell your friends. Educate your family. Trains aren’t dangerous; it’s people walking nearby that create this zone of danger. Honor Miss McAvoy’s memory by ensuring she is the last victim of railroad track accidents.
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5 Comments
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Well written!
I agree with you that there needs to be more awareness about the hazards of trains and using pagers in surroundings that could become dangerous through inattention.
But how would you go about educating others? Yes, we can educate our family and friends. But what about people whose family/friends don’t care or don’t see the importance? Do we just let them go and hope they find out on their own?
Was it just me, or did anybody notice that CNN, in their video, interviewed only hearing people - even those who worked at TSD?
Actually, I believe CK said at least one of them was deaf (a CI user who spoke for the camera) - she was a former grad school classmate of CK’s who now works at TSD. I could be wrong, though.
I think that the media sacrificed pc-ness for the sake of convenience on that one.
Was there an interpreter available at the time? if not, there probably wasn’t time, in the reporter’s mind, to go find one, since the news industry is so time-intensive and operates on deadlines.
But one can only wish, especially me as a journalist, that there were more reporters who knew how to approach deaf people and how important it is to get their opinion on deaf-related stuff. I think a lot of them don’t really realize that because they haven’t been exposed or educated about that.
[…] Then the news of Tara McAvoy’s death quickly spread throughout the deaf blogosphere. DeafDC.com partook in this debate, with Adam pointing out that it’s almost impossible to feel an oncoming train’s vibrations well in advance, and Allison decrying other bloggers’ efforts to, as Joseph Rainmound put it, “turning the poor girl into the Deaf version of Terri Schiavo.” […]