Video: Cyclist 'stars' in more level crossing madness - as he, pedestrian & driver dice with death

Half barrier crossings have a limit on train speed because of the danger to other users. They do not thunder through at full speed round here it's 110mph for full closure crossings and around half that for half barriers. Mind you being hit by 200tonnes or more of train at 55mph will make a bit of a mess.

Come on Network Rail: I want better CCTV images. I hate squinting

No sounds at work so cant listen to the video, but just watching it there seems to be a few issues with the examples used.
1. first clip looks sped up to me, only a little bit, but enough to make it seem far worse than it was. This obviously increases the perception of risk. As has been said the pedestrian checks the line both ways and crosses when it seems clear. If BR had provided a footbridge this would not have happened.
2. Cyclist looks to slam the brakes on and skids on the wet floor rather than speeding to beat the barrier to me...
3. Car driver was a tosser (Id never stop on a crossing whatever but there you go), then again they are just sheepling along behind the traffic ahead, so you have to ask what road design causes traffic to queue over a railway crossing and should the road design be changed to stop this happening.

In fairness to the pedestrian in the first clip, he was already on the crossing when the barriers came down, he kept checking the line and was well clear by the time the train passed.

I feel a bit disappointed to read comments that echo the unreasonable mindset of people who blame cyclists and pedestrians for the dangers that confront them on roads.

Railways have actually done a lot over the years to reduce the numbers of fatalities and serious injuries that happen on the rail network. As the article here makes clear incidents are monitored and practical changes follow when flaws are identified. Maybe not as quickly as we might like but the intention is there.

Network Rail and others with responsibilities do not make comments about people with limited awareness or intelligence (victim blaming at heart) they redraw the designs and increase the warning levels.

So, it is salutary to note that there are people interested in cycling who are as mortal and fallible as everyone else and who, now and again, resort to blaming victims rather than encouraging danger reduction.

The question should always be "what can we do to make sure that can't happen or won't happen so often in future?" and the answer should rarely be "tell people not to be stupid".

It should go without saying that badly judged humour saying "let them (and their defective dna) die is neither original nor amusing.

portsmouth waterloo line farncombe, people can be idiots but then I think some people can very genuinley get caught out. The barriers at Farncombe can be down, train passes, they go up, and in well under 60 seconds they are coming down again, at times under certain road conditions that barely allows 4 cars to get across, if someone in front, stops to make a left hand turn after crossing, then people are trapped on the crossing. Surely better to leave barriers down if for such a short gap between trains. The inverse of this is the barrier can be left down for ages (10min +) between trains. Seems little logic at times, there maybe good reasons or none at all, but if we are not told as to the reasons why then how do we know.

I note that there was a crash involving a train and a car on a crossing in the US yesterday. The car exploded on impact and passengers in the front of the train have been seriously injured - there may have been some deaths too. Train crossings always make me nervous when I'm driving over them. There's one I pass by when heading for a local cycle track and I always take care. I've seen pedestrians squeeze under the barrier a couple of times.

A friend of mine used to work for British Rail (as it was then) and one of his unenviable tasks was having to get underneath locomotives after they had struck people to make sure there was no damage. The rules meant the locomotive had to be kept stationary for safety checks (by him or someone like him) before it could be moved. His graphic description of having to remove body parts from a locomotive's driveline stuck in my memory, though not perhaps to the same degree the actual experience was embedded in his.

The Corsa one is just insane. Shame the video doesn't show the train actually passing, to see how much time he/she actually had...

Kind of agree with Tiffin15 here, sometimes it's best just to let natural selection run its course, even if it does bugger up everyone else's rail journeys for the rest of the day.

I'm surprised how quick the gates come down in these videos, there's almost no reaction time.

In America the crossing lights and bells come on for a few seconds before the gates start coming down. This gives people (idiots) a chance to get the heck out of the way and not be trapped or hit by gates.

What a bunch of bellends. Sadly not that surprising/rare. It really is mind-boggling!

I'd love them all to come forward and let them tell us just what they were thinking..... as for the Corsa driver, let's hope he/she was wearing his/her bike clips or at least had easy clean floor mats!

Complete and utter madness. Yet if an accident does happen the rail company get lambasted from all sides.

The number of times I see people try to squeeze onto box junctions and the like I often think they are idiots, but to do it on a level crossing is just madness!

Let it happen reduce the spread of the stupid gene

Two words: Fcuk Wits.

And how much of a anal twitch would the corsa drive have had!

A truly frightening display of peoples thought, or lack thereof, process.

Was the first clip uneditted? I'm slightly surprised how short was the interval between the barriers closing, the train passing, and the barriers going up again. The only level crossings I encounter you get stuck there for up to 20 minutes waiting for trains to go through after the barriers close.`

(I still maintain there would have been a net economic gain in terms of saved time - and occasional saved lives - over the century or more they have been there if some more heavily used crossings had had footbridges put in in the first place!)