Hi, Rosa. How are you? I'm good, how are you? Am I right in thinking you had a giant birthday celebration last night, correct? It was not giant. It was very modestly sized. So you're not too hung over today? Look, size is nothing to do with hangovers. So something I find, I've always found interesting about you, is you tend to, when your birthday comes around, you don't have the one thing, you tend to have a month of sort of ongoing bullshit. Would you agree? Okay, yeah. I mean, you're correct for calling me Alan that, but that's not what happened this time around, even though. Well, when was your birthday? How long ago? On the third tape. Yeah, and today is the 28th, as you record this. What about I was busy, I couldn't have a party. Now, today's episode, Rosa Bell, is about trains again, and I know we last talked about trains when we did the train helping episode. Today, we are talking about the huge number of train versus car crashes in America, because America has so many cars and so many train lines. Okay. And so I wanted to play a little game, and I mean, it's sort of serious, so it probably shouldn't be a game, but I want you to guess how many train derailments the United States has every year. Train's leaving the tracks in one form or another. Two. 1,300 is the correct answer. Oh my god, more! Yeah, I mean, that kind of sets a scene for the sole episode, it just gets more hectic from here. I've got so many questions. How many trains do you think hit cars? How many times have that happened last year? 600. 1,879 times. Oh my god, my brother works in Melbourne on track stuff. But he sees over there there are tracks that can turn into trains, and then you just drive on the tracks. What tracks can turn into train? I hope I've got that right. I might be making it up. I'm David Ferrier in New Zealand, accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now ever since we did a story on train hopping, I haven't been able to stop thinking about trains. These magical things that weave their way across the epic landscapes of the United States. Rob and I keep talking about taking a train trip for this very podcast, taking it America as a speeds by out the window. Well after putting together today's episode, I'm not so sure about that train trip. Through around 1,300 train derailments in the US every year, that's 3.5 per day, Robert. Since 1975, those derailments have killed 465 people, 12.5,000 people maimed along the way. Then there are the incidents of trains hitting cars, mostly at railway crossings. Last year, trains hit 1,870 of them. 147 people died in the process, and 623 were injured. The year before that, even more people died being hit by America's trains. This whole thing blows my mind. Trains used to be heavily regulated, but deregulation in the 70s mean there are now 6 train companies that run the majority of things here, overseen by the Federal Railroad Association, which only has the capacity to oversee about 1% of train activity in the USA. And that's a problem. In this episode, I talk to a woman who's been working at a law firm for over a decade that purely just represents motorists who have been hit by a train. So, prepare to hear our train-tuning theme song like you've never heard it before, because this is the train crash episode. Robert, how are you? Good, how are you? I'm good. I'm excited about this topic today, because I feel like we do some topics that I feel are like, hmm, how do I frame this? Very weird and specific. Weird and specific. And I don't want to be pretentious, but kind of worthy. Not saying that they're not all worthy, but I feel like it has something to say. Well, and you feel like you've found a story. Like when we're doing candy. Candy. No, that one's not going to blow anyone's mind. And saying that, they're good episodes. People seem to listen to them, but the bit of me that gets excited is when I feel like there's information that we're on everything that is sort of, I don't know, I think, blowing minds and putting light on something that maybe people haven't thought about too much before. Or just educational. Exactly. Maybe that's, people are going to hopefully get something out of an episode, and they're not going to do when they are hearing about 90s Nickelodeon. Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Housekeeping Rob. What have we got this for? Housekeeping before we start. We have some live shows. Tickets are on sale for those. Yes. Links for those shows are in the show notes, but we're doing March 29th and Salt Lake City at the Depot, April 2nd in Austin at Emo's and April 4th in Dallas at the Texas Theater. So if you're in any of these areas or close to them, come see David and I. We'd love that. We'd love nothing more than looking out into audience and seeing people there. That's one of the best things that can happen. The nightmare is looking out and there's no one there. Terrific. Imagine that. Empty seats, not fun for us, but maybe still fun if it's like 20 people. I think 20 and above, as long as your mum and dad are in the audience, I'm generally pretty happy. I mean, if there's like a really, really, really bad turnout, that could maybe be fun too. Oh yeah, completely. Just novel. Yes. Performing for 15 to 15 people at once. Yes. And then it shows so much if it wouldn't do it. Yes. 15 people. Loving every moment. And if you have suggestions for topics, places for us to go, see or eat at, fly the purchase at gmail.com. And specifically, if you're a taxidermist. Yes. We're still looking fun. We've been looking fun for a while. Still looking for any large, weird things that you own that you think would make sense and be fitting for our show. Right. That would be amazing. Flight the spread chat at gmail.com. As usual, love your feedback. I assume if you listen to this, you listen to the end of the episode, but if you've been tuning out at any point and not getting to this, one of my favorite bits of the show is reading out your feedback at the end because the amount of stuff we get that is enlightening and funny and weird, I've never been more grateful to set up a generic e-mail address to receive the weirdest stories and personal affections. And I love reading that at the end. Another train episode. So I had jotted down a few notes and then forgot we did a train-hoppy in episode. Yeah. Okay. And I definitely have told all of these stories. Any story I have about trains. You know, if that's actually something interesting to think about, when we do this once a week and we've been making this podcast for years now, inevitably you do start to repeat certain elements, right? Because our lives only have so much kind of in them that we can grab and pull into the show. Yes. And we are ourselves on this show. So like I don't even, sometimes it blurs of like what did I tell you at a coffee shop versus what we talked about on a podcast. Completely. It gets really weird at times. I have that exact same thought of like, have I bought this up before? Have I not? What are we talked about? What's your favorite train, Refection or thought? What did you scratch off the list because you're like, oh my God, we've talked about this already. No, it was just we did a train ride up to Oakland through Santa Barbara, which just came up on a recording we did it earlier this morning. I think I very much romanticized train rides. Yes. Same. And this is unpopular opinion, but is one of my favorite West Anderson movies? It's a derange take. I know. I know. Is the correct answer. Yeah, I know. But I accept. It's like the whole family dynamic brother thing, I think in timing of watching that. So because of that, I really romanticized that trains that train ride up with Calvin. This was before Vincent was born. Had a beautiful time. Yes, but the train ride was not what? It was during COVID, we were going to take the trip back, already booked tickets for the trip back. And we were like, oh no, we're just going to rent a car and drive back once was enough. Once up was enough with a four year old. My question to you with trains, because this episode is something that I hadn't thought about a lot before. Like essentially, I am about to talk to a woman we've had to anonymize her completely. She's worked at a law firm for over a decade now. I would say it's a good sign for our episode when we have to anonymize. It's a first. Persons voice entirely. Yeah, it's a first with this just because she has certain insights that she wants to keep her identity out of it. It's amazing that she's giving any of these insights in the first place. And yeah, she's great and she's insightful. I just never thought about trains versus cars before, but of course, in this country where there's so much railway and so many people in cars occasionally trains and cars are going to meet. What I didn't understand is how often that would happen and how little the train companies, especially the commercial train companies, appear not to care as much as I'd argue they should about this. I don't know.
I think we're gonna learn that it's not a weird take, but to me, train safety has always been a thing at least growing up near Chicago. - Interesting, no, 'cause we died one of your train stations. There was like Palatine train station was nearby, you'd take that into the city. Like there were crossings at every train track near us that would go down and like cars would have to wait and it would take forever school buses if they went over a train track, even if the crossing wasn't down, they had to stop, open up their window, and look out to see if there was a train coming. - Yeah, sightline, not just like trust. - Yeah, because I think it was in '95, there was a school bus hit by, I don't know if this is why, but there was a school bus hit by a train. - Nightmare scenario. - In Fox River Grove, Illinois. - God, with like kids on board. - Yeah, killed seven kids. - Oh, yeah, probably horrific. - Jesus. - But like train tracks are a thing. I remember like my sister got in a car accident once 'cause she was stopped on a train track and the train started coming and she just had to pull forward and hit the car in front of her to get off the train track. - That's, so cars had stopped and she was just sort of-- - Yeah, I mean, you're not supposed to stop on the train track. - No, but that's the thing. Sometimes when you're driving, I've done this in New Zealand where you're just sort of in your own world and you don't realize the traffic in front of you is gonna stop and seeming to act on a line. And I feel like at some point my TikTok and Instagram feeds both through me into an algorithm of watching nothing but cars getting stuck on railway crossings and either-- - What a weird, other than that. - It's there, believe me. And either just narrowly escaping or getting completely taken out. - Yeah. - When you were a kid in America, was it, we educated at school with the safety campaigns? Was it your parents being like, "Look both ways," or whatever? Like, do you remember any of that? - I think it was school. Like, I think we were taught. But I do, I mean, I also think it's different when you go to more rural areas in different parts of the country where they're not highly populated. - Completely. And where there's not a crossing every time there's just road meets tracks. - And I will say most of the trains, we were dealing with were commuter trains into the city and then you'd go out to the more rural parts around. And that's where the longer freight trains were. - Yeah, right. I also feel that there are so many movies where there's that scene where a train is coming and either like someone's on the tracks running away on a bridge or something. Or it's a, I feel like it just bleeds into pop culture so much as well. - Yeah. - 'Cause there's obviously a fear we all have and things happen with train tracks. - Yeah, but I do, I remember as a little kid though, my grandma who's passed, she lived near a train station and she would take us to the train, give us coins. We'd put them on the track, wait for a train to come by and then go collect the flattened coins. Sorry, this is really incredible. That was a thing, just she'll granted this. So this is like a thing American kids would do. I don't, my grandma would, I didn't, yeah. - And how much other people have done it? - Wait, so Graham would be like, going on another those tracks. - She wouldn't put some coins on that. - She wouldn't put some coins on that all at that point. - Okay. - And you'd put these coins in and how much would they flatten? No. - They're completely flattened. I mean, you have to go find them 'cause when they get run over, they're flying all over the place. But it's like, they'll line up a bunch of pennies and nickels and dimes on the train track. - It's funny. - Scurry off, wait for a train to come and then go and collect them. - That is something I've never heard being done before. And that's really novel and I kind of get the appeal. - Well, have you seen some museums have the like, crank things that they'll like flatten and in bevel like a design on them? - No. - Perfect. - Another amazing thing. - There's some being blowing. - Be it a, they look like that. - You weren't ever worried about derailing the train by putting things on the tracks. - No, trains are big. And I've heard of, yeah, I think some pennies are going to. - There's rocks all over that are much bigger than the pennies. - Yeah, right. - That definitely some end up on the track and that's not derailing a train. - I'm also reminded of a very another specific bunch of videos that get sent to me as people for whatever reasons, falling onto the tracks or jumping down to pick something up and then there's a train coming. Of course, the problem being now there's AI everywhere and a lot of them are just bullshit. - Well, is that where you're envisioning or putting pennies down? - Yeah. - No, this is like- - Absolutely. - This is like- - Yeah, the train stays like jumping down. - No, no, no. - That's, you're kind of like- - You're lowering you down on the tracks and then like grabbing you back up again. - That's more like city trains. - Okay. - Out in the suburbs was much more like, you're walking to a train track street level. - I understand. - This seems way less intense and psychotic than I was originally thinking. - Yes, yes, yes. - Not, yes, not the L train. - Okay. - You're going underground that you're jumping down and doing. - Okay. - Yeah, I was pitching sort of like New York subway. - Yeah, yeah. - You know? - I've always heard rumors that it's like pretty electrified. I don't know if that is just a discouraged people from- - I also had that exact fear on my head now. I would never- Now, but I've touched train tracks out. This is interesting. In my brain, American subways are electrified. Like, I'm worried if I jump down into a New York subway. - Yeah. - I would get fried. - Train tracks out in the middle of Arizona are happily like touch with my naked body and feel like I wasn't going to be able to get it. - I'm putting my butt on them. - Yeah, but I wonder if there's any truth to that or it's just like, they say that- - It's an urban myth to keep people away. - Yeah. - I'm just going to quickly Google that now. Are subway tracks electrified? - We're really stupid for not. - And also, never jump onto tracks to figure this out. Most subway tracks are electrified. - So it's subway though, but not like- - You're using a highly dangerous third rail that carries between 600 and 750 volts DC. Are train tracks electrified? - It is funny, these kind of facts feel so dumb, not knowing them. - Yeah, because this feels real dumb. - You know, it's like Googling one plus one. - Well, I guess it's not universally electrified when it comes to train tracks. - So it probably depends on if it's like a- - I feel stupid singing. - No, say it, it depends on what? - Like a steam engine. - Steam engine, steam engine. - Or steam engine powering the train versus the subway. That is- - Okay, so there's a whole- - There's a whole Wikipedia page called railway electrification. So just find that, and if you want to find out about this, but again, stay away from train tracks in general. Don't wait to find out with the electrified, just stay away from them. - You know, I think rural train tracks, like maybe go put some pennies on them, and I mean, watch what you're doing and do it safely, but- - Yes. - It was fun. - Would that be one of your favorite childhood memories, did you say? - It's a good one. - It's a good one, positive. - Yeah. - It's so cute. Grandma Lala. - Grandma Lala. - Why Lala? - Her name was Loretta. - It's such a cute grandma name. - One my sister was a kid. She couldn't say Loretta, obviously. So Lala became- - Lala. - Your name. - Okay, so let's hear from Caroline, not her real name, and I'm curious, RobbaFlat, me, your mind was kind of blown by this. - Your fear is about to be unlocked? - Oh, yeah. - I've been talking to Caroline for a while now, going back and forth to make sure I understand things properly, to the point where she's probably sick to death of talking to me. - For the last decade, she's how to position at a law firm that has a very specific area of expertise. - I work for a very small but very successful, latest personal injury litigation firm, and the team that I support specializes in people who get hit by freight trains. - I've changed her name for the story, and kept out a bunch of details due to confidentiality constraints. As I said earlier, a lot of Americans get killed by trains every year. Hundreds, thousands more get injured, so she has plenty of work. - How many people are getting hit by freight trains? - When I came here for my very first interview and my boss sat me down and told me we represent people that get hit by trains, I was so afraid because my face shows whatever I'm thinking immediately before I can pull it back. And so when I thought to myself, how hard is it to not get hit by a fucking train? And I was hoping that wasn't flashing across my face, but you would be shocked at how many motorists get hit by trains and are either irreparably named and/or killed, and it was totally preventable. It's the railroad's fault, and they always put profits over people, and they do not care how much they spend litigating this shit. They will not put the lights and the arms in every single crossing in the country just to make them all safe. So we battle Goliath every day. - In this case, Goliath means the six giant train companies that run things here, sending freight all across the United States. And the problem is, a lot of the train tracks weave their way through places where humans live, and where humans live.
drive. And cars and trains don't go so well together. One of our experts on the witness stand, likened it to a hot cam, getting run over by a city bus. And the amount of forces, depending on how that train is loaded and the inertia, when those engineers have to throw those trains into emergency, sometimes it takes them a mile and a half to stop. With the cases you take on, how often are you representing someone who has been hit and has been maimed and injured. And how often are you representing a partner or a, you know, the person has passed away and you're representing someone else. There's always the person that's been hit. And if they die, there's no case. No, no, if they die, their family is entitled by law to file a awful death suit against the railroad. How often is the person left alive and how often is it a family that's pursuing it roughly? It's nearly half and half, but maybe skewed a little bit more like 65% die. The rest are maimed just because of the forces that are at play. But I had a case. It was actually the second case at the same crossing in the same county in the same state. There were by passengers in the car. And if you saw what it looked like after that hit, you would not believe that anyone survived it and all five of them survived. But three of them have to run and bring injuries. The other two have PTSD. I mean, they're unskilled, but they are alive. Chapter one, why are trains hitting cars all the time? As I noted earlier, trains hit 1,870 vehicles last year. To me, that's a pretty significant number. And a big sequestion, why? Why are so many trains hitting cars? It's not like drivers want to get hit by a train. I'd argue most Americans want to avoid being hit by a train. It seems like an objectively terrible thing to happen in your day. And I realized that when I first started talking to Caroline, I was picturing railway crossings as this big arm that comes down, along with flashing lights and lots of dinghy noises. But of course, here in America, that's not every railway crossing. Often it's just a sign on the side of a road indicating that train tracks are coming up. And it turns out, sometimes that's not enough. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Wilde, Alaskan. Now, I don't know about Europe, but I never trust myself to buy fish and seafood in general. I'm always worried it's not going to be fresh or it's not going to taste good. All those problems have been solved with Wilde, Alaskan. Yeah, it's very intimidating to go buy fish from a grocery store. It is right of all the things. 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And growtherapy.com/bird. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Most of the time when someone gets hit by a train, it's because they couldn't see or hear the train in time. What are the main things that you find at causing these crashes? There are a myriad of reasons why that could happen. But more often than not its vegetation, the vegetation can get real wild and still have nothing done about it. There's this picture that we have from a case way, way, way before my time here. And my boss said, "Look at this picture and going to me where the train is." And I was like, "There's not a train in this picture." He's like, "No, I promise you there's a train in this picture." The picture was taken from the point at which our driver would have needed to see the train. And it was so obscured you could only see the tiniest little silver top above the corn stalks of an amtrap train. I had a case where the blockage was by a grain elevator that the railroad couldn't do anything about. They're required to maintain their right of weight, but that just offers their right of weight. But instead of putting in lights and gates because they knew people couldn't see, they just left it alone. And there was a crossing accident there. Now it has lights and gates. So a car not seeing an oncoming train is a big one. Not hearing a train is another biggie. It's going so fast that it's outpacing what its horn is doing. If you're blasting music in your car and you don't see it or hear it, by the time you do see it or hear it, your past the point of no return. You don't have enough time for your brain to do the perception reaction time and then it gets stopped. So you're basically on this collision course that you don't even know about and then you get clout into. And I am so sad to report the ones who die or the lucky ones. If we think that the cause of the accident was because the horn was sounded improperly, we have the higher audiologist. We always hire a 3D drone accident reconstructionist who flies their drone and the technology has gotten so good that they can place every leaf that was present on the day of the crash and then they can recreate the crash with all of the black box data and they can show what it would have looked like if the railroad would have done their job and that the accident wouldn't have happened and then they can show how the accident was nearly unavoidable. Caroline says that sure, sometimes drivers are fully at faults for getting hit. They're drunk or they're driving past barriers like complete idiots. But more often than not, drivers are drunk and they don't have a death wish. The most common reason that these things happen is because the railroad does not maintain its crossing according to its own intercompany rules and the federal laws of the government. What kind of arguments are these train companies putting forward to try and say, hey, it's not us, it's on this idiot who got hit? Before we get to trial, they always try to file this motion and it is a legal concept called preemption that's pretty else apparent, but basically boils down to if the railroad can prove that any federal money hit the warning devices at any particular crossing, then that crossing bylaw is deemed safe and they don't need to do anything else with it. So they try to make a case for that and they go back into the county where it happened and dig out all these records from the 1800 or whenever that land was conveyed to the railroad. And they try to prove that federal money touched the signage and the warning devices. Those warning devices, pretty basic. The railroad considers the advanced warning sign, a warning device, and that ex-sign that says railroad crossing, white with black letters, crossbuck is what it's called. They call those warning devices and if they can prove that any federal money touched it, then it's deemed safe by the federal government and that's that. And so then if they lose that argument, we press forward to go to trial and then a trial, it's just basically blame the driver, blame the driver, blame the driver. Chapter 2, blame the driver.
The person driving the car that gets hit by a train, they are partly responsible. They drove their car onto the tracks. Caroline gets that, but there are other factors at play. We always try to tell jurors that for whatever reason, this person didn't see or hear this train, but compare what this person knew, particularly if it's a crossing that this person had never gone across before, compare what the person knew in those split seconds versus what the railroad knew for years. And so when we're asking for certain dollar amounts from the jury, we always assign a portion of fall to our driver, because at the end of the day somebody did foul the tracks and get hit by a train. That might be 10%, that might be 30%, it depends entirely on the case, and not every case wins, sometimes a jury finds the driver 100% at fault. But while thinking about the drivers that get hit, I find myself thinking about the people driving the trains, engineers is a technical term. They're the ones looking down the tracks, observing what's going on, they're meant to stop the train of something, like a car gets in the way, and Caroline says yes, the engineers definitely come into the equation when collisions happen. Sometimes it's because they didn't blow the horn in the right pattern. Sometimes they didn't blow it soon enough. Also they don't throw it into emergency until the very last second, because when they dump the brakes like that, all this sand comes out to try to create friction so that it doesn't just continue to carry down the track, and it takes a long time to get the pneumatic brakes gas back up with the air to get going again and keep moving free. So it's all about keeping that freight moving, even if they see a car coming and could have even throttled down a little bit, they just keep barreling forward and cross their fingers that the motor sees them. She says there are plenty of examples where if an engineer had swung into action a little bit earlier, crashes could have been prevented entirely. My case has had that 3D expert model out what would have happened if the engineer would have frown down even by like 1, 2, 3 miles an hour when they saw the vehicle. The collision would have been avoided. She says one of the most horrifying aspects of her job is watching the footage taken from the train's point of view, seeing what the engineer is seeing. You see on that locomotive video the point at which the vehicle is visible, and that means that if it's visible to the locomotive camera, it's visible to the engineer too. You know it's going to happen, but every single time you watch it when it actually does collide, it is still just shocking. And because the camera sits very high, you don't ever see any of the gore or the carnage, you see carparts flying and stuff like that, but you never see any of the worst of it. So at the end of the day, it can be the engineer's fault, but it's not that simple. Train drivers are facing pressure to deliver their freight on time, they're working in a system stack against them. Just like the person in the car doesn't want to get hit, I don't imagine the train driver particularly wants to hit a car or a person either. It has become evident to me over the years that the same tack that the railroads take in front of a jury is the tack that they take when they train their engineers. And it's playing the driver, playing the driver. They don't even train their engineers that if they're going through crossing on their route, and they see that one of those crossbugs has fallen over to call in and report it, they're not even charged with anything like that, but the people that are on those tracks and traveling through those crossings all the time are the ones that should be the eyes and ears of the railroad, but they're not trained to be that because the railroad doesn't care. They actually all combine their resources together to run this program called Operation Life Sever and that's where all the stop looking listen stuff comes from. And so they go in and try to heavily indoctrinate schools and stuff in the community for the stop looking listen, but it's all under the presumption that the railroads never at fault and it's always the driver. So we know six to 18 months ahead of time when we're going to go to trial. And so I'll say anything that one of them has done is a month before our trial in a very small community, they ran an Operation Life Sever event so that the jury pool would be tainted with stop looking listen, it's always the driver's fault. Incredible, incredible timing. Yeah. So cynical isn't it? It's so so cynical. It is. It's really evil. It's so cynical. Thinking of AI and cameras and self-driving cars and everything else we have, I feel like it shouldn't be on the driver just to this guy looking ahead on the tracks to like see if there's a car there or not. Is there any tech coming in to look ahead and go, oh, car approaching tracks too fast must stop. Is there anything like that that's coming in? Oh, it's been in. There has been a thing called positive train control for a very long time and the railroads could retrofit their engines with it and it would almost be like, if you have a very modern car, it'll pump the brakes for you if it senses that you're too close. Now technology has been around for locomotive train engines for a very long time and they just won't spend the money to retrofit them with it. It's just absolutely absurd. They wouldn't avail themselves of something that could save the motorie public but also save their engineers. The trauma of knowing that they named or killed someone. When those engineers get on the witness stand at trial, they are traumatized. Some of them even break down and cry and it is no picnic for them either. Chapter 3. Will this ever stop? Caroline sees that when she thinks about it, she's been dealing with trains for a lot longer than the last 10 years. I had a near miss for the train when I was in high school. I was leaving from a breakfast place and my boyfriend was behind me in the car and I had radio right, I always listened to my music so loud and I didn't see it or hear it and he said that it missed me by seconds. Looking at the stats of trains hitting cars, this has been happening for a long time. It's not trending down either. Last year, 1,870 collisions, 247 did. The year before that, 264 did, 2023, 244 did. 222, 276 did. That all starts to add up. Do you see any trains in this getting better, like are the least people being killed and maimed than they used to be when you started? No, no difference. The worst part about it is that these crossings that don't have the lights engaged are typically ones that are in rural areas and many times economically depressed areas and the railroads just do not care about the motoring public. They are for moving, free and making money. We represented a man who got hit and during the course of bat litigation, our expert told the railroad, somebody is going to die at this intersection. There will be more accidents at this intersection and by that, there was. Caroline says the root cause of so much of this is just money. That Goliath we talked about at the start of all this, the six companies that ruled the majority of America's railways. Those six class one railroads could pull their resources together and it wouldn't even cost a billion dollars to do. They could put lights engaged at every crossing in this country. So these accidents wouldn't happen any more or at least less frequently. And even with that scenario in mind, she wonders if the greed would still mean more collisions and more deaths anyway. I had a case where this town had lights and gates all throughout the town because every single crossing where it met the road was blocked by buildings and stuff until they had to have those arms because people had no chance to see it. But the railroad turned off all the signals in town, didn't put a flagman out to warn motorists, sent a piece of maintenance equipment down the track and it plowed into our client and gave her daughter a traumatic brain injury. So you can't even trust lighted and gated ones either. I stop at every single railroad crossing that I come to even if it pisses people off behind me because I don't trust those lights engaged either. I do some big drives around America, I've definitely driven over railway tracks that didn't have an arm. Now they think about it. Do you have any advice for people and how they approach train tracks in general? Well, it's funny because every time we have a pool of germs and we're doing our jury selection process, one of the questions we ask them is, do you stop at every railroad crossing? And of course, all of them lie and try to act like they're such responsible citizens. Oh yes, absolutely, I stop at every railroad crossing. Well, no motorist is under any sort of legal obligation to stop at every crossing unless the train is visible or audible at 1500 feet.
The only thing that absolutely has to stop every time is hazardous materials and school buses. So my advice to anybody would be unless it's on a highway and you doing this would cause a rear end chain reaction collision, either stop or slow down, way, way, way down so that you can absolutely see far down both sides of the track, both directions because you don't have any idea what that crossing is supposed to be like and what your sightlines are supposed to be and whether or not that crossing is maintained properly or if you're on a collision course with a train. Chapter 4 Should Rob and David take a train? Walt Caroline's been talking, "I've been wondering about me and Rob's idea of taking a big train ride across the United States of America." Somehow that idea is kind of soured. But also this whole time, Caroline's been talking about freight trains. Rob and I wouldn't take a freight train, we're not train hopping, we'd go on a train for passengers and Amtrak. Surely an Amtrak's okay? Then I remembered the story Caroline told earlier, "And my boss said look at this picture and went to me where the train is." They'd been talking about Amtrak. The case that I told you about that was before my time where the tiniest sliver of silver was showing, that was an Amtrak train, but Amtrak is a governmental entity and they operate on tracks owned by the Big Six and the Big Six are the ones that are responsible for the maintenance of the crossings and the tracks and all of it, the warning devices whether they're lights and gates or just crossbugs. Would you ever take a train in America like a sightseeing train in Amtrak, would you ever be able to get on? No, absolutely not. It wouldn't matter where it was because no matter which of the Big Six owned those tracks, I can guarantee you there's some bullshit going on. I would never. When I first started this train stuff, I was the tender age of 36 and I'm really finding that the toll that these cases take on me takes a lot more out of me as I age in terms of stress levels and grief fatigue and empathy fatigue in that kind of thing, but when we are able to prevail, it's the best feeling in the world. Caroline Reckons is a twofold way the railroads could prevent so many deaths and injuries, one by putting lights and gates at every crossing and two by retrofitting every locomotive with positive train control, that AI stuff we talked about earlier, the technology that makes your fancy car break when you're being a shitty and attentive driver, but again, it all comes down to money. During our last conversation, Caroline told me she heard someone once make the point that if a person killed as many people as the railroad companies do, that'd be the most horrific mass murderer America has ever seen, but because they're a corporation with a mighty lobby in Washington, they continue to get away with it. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Bombas, now still people keep asking me what is my 2026 resolution and I say look, that's private, but I also say actually my usual goal, I just want to be more comfy and that is where Bombas comes in, they're bringing serious comfort to all my everyday go-to's. They have all new Bombas sport socks that are engineered with sport specific comfort for running, golf, hiking, skiing, snowboarding and all sport. I love using the sport socks when I play softball. You're a sporty boy. Sporty boy. One thing I say about your up, sporty boy. 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So yeah, they do really amazing socks, but they also do a bunch of really other amazing things as well. Head over to bombis.com/bird and use code bird for 20% off your first purchase. That's B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash bird code bird at checkout. Oh yeah. Yeah, I think it's fair to say after that, I feel less inclined to watch videos that puff off my feet of people missing or being hit by, you know, it's like that whole area just is so bleak and awful and dark and she spoke to it so directly as well. Yeah. And she's doing this for 10 yearsish and that's her whole life is dealing with this type of stuff. Yes. It's insane. It's also crazy that that many unsuspecting people have been killed and there's just nothing being done. No, I mean, I the lack of care from the big sex jumped out of me a lot. This idea that if they all pull their resources, they could essentially fix the problem or at least decrease that 250 odd people a year they get kills. And I never really thought about when I'm driving around, I've driven over train tracks, I just kind of trust that I'll see it or hear it. And I've never really thought about, oh, is the vegetation blocking my line of sight. Also forget how fast they're moving and the device. I sort of assume if I see a train, I'll have enough time to stop. But no, like if you're seeing it at the wrong angle and there are trees in the way, that's going to get to you before my slow brain has time to react. Yeah. Have you ever heard a stop looking listen? I've never heard this whole campaign thing. Yeah. It came back to me very visceral. All right. Yeah. So that was, yeah, it's definitely like a school thing that you're, you're right. Talk. And obviously it's a great thing to be taught that there was that one particular example she gave of them arguing before getting in and making sure that program was in place to spoil a jury pool. So the idea is that no, like it is on you to stop looking listen. Like that's your responsibility. I still don't see that as like a, then full response as a driver like no, it's, it's like be careful and watch out. But also if there's a train barreling at you, like, there's only so much you can do. And it's that thing as well where, you know, if you buy a modern car today, the whole thing, I mean, some car ads, even I feel that make this point that when you're in your car, all the noises in the outside world is going to be muted. So you can listen to your flight, this bird episode or music or whatever. And so audio is an issue. And then a flying of sight is an issue as well with overgrown, you know, trees and bushes and shit. That's the other crazy part of that of just like vegetation is literally taking over to where you can't see the tracks until it's too late completely. And nothing's being done about that. So it did not like the fact that the six major corporations are sort of running, essentially running things, the feds aren't kind of monitoring that particularly closely. And that's the tracks that Amtrak is using, which I actually, I saw a, I jotted this down in my notes. I saw a tweet about Amtrak. Someone just tweeted, thank you for choosing Amtrak. In quotes, no problem, there are no other trains. And that's obviously Amtrak's logo, right? Like that's the whole slogan, it's like, but that's it in this country, Amtrak is basically your option. Yeah. Yeah, which is what we were talking about going on, which just seems less, you know, less appealing to me now. Well, I mean, this reminds me of my friend that took a cross-country trip over the summer from New York to the west coast and yeah, they're, they got delayed like two days because someone got hit by a train. Yeah. Fucking hell. And he, like, learned on that trip, like, oh yeah, that happens all the time. Yeah. A friend in New Zealand is a paramedic and dealing with people because that's, I mean, this whole episode has been about the idea of cars versus trains, but you add pedestrians into the mix for a variety of reasons and that's the whole other thing. I mean, we just had a guest on the show that we've recorded who just casually, I said, we've got a training episode coming up and brought up the example of a kid who got hit because they were listening to their headphones, you know, there's people as well. And then there's people, I mean, there's just so many cases of this as awful. It's just a weird thing too, like, trains are so such a part of, like, early America and they're, like, expansion west, and it seems like such an archaic piece of transportation that you don't even really think about it too much if you're not an everyday train user completely. And you're just kind of assuming that, like, the technology is there, the systems are in place, the city and the state.
and government like they're looking up to it yeah they're doing everything I need you to keep everything completely safe which it sounds like it's modernizing maybe not the case well yeah and even when she was talking about that system that trains could be retrofitted with that help a train see not just down to an engineer to see what's happening up ahead but there's a system in place that could automate some of that stuff and they're just not backlogging that and fitting it in which seems insane to me but you're right it is it's like I until we did the train hopping episode I hadn't really thought about trains at all but that's how a lot of our shit is getting around it's not all being flown by a plane a lot of it's just loaded up and sent on these really old feel like growing up I was watching out at Wesons and it was like trains and there's the whole level of like slave labor to build the trains which maybe this brings us to our history teacher episode we want to do at some point maybe use something on the western expansion of the railroad something that I know zero one yeah because that's a whole other thing you didn't watch hell on wheels no didn't what is it is it like a driver about the train with common and ants in mount I enjoyed it it's okay like a historical movie yeah right historical tv show about building the railroads if you're listening to this and you have any thoughts maybe you I'm curious if anyone listening has either sort of narrowly escaping hit by a train or sort of being around anything that's happened I'll be curious to hear from you flight this bread chat at gmr.com if you're one of the big six train companies and you think this episode is wronged you feel free to write in I'm curious on your take on this did you watch train dreams I did watch train dreams I liked it I'm a Joel Joel Edgidon right yeah I'm a Joel Edgidon fan wasn't heavy train it was very um yeah very train was a training and he worked on the rail like he worked on trains but it wasn't a big part of the movie true yeah it was mainly just him um uh cutting down a lot of trees I enjoyed that but I mean that was a was pretty sad movie was incredibly sad and I could watch Joel Edgidon and anything I think he's just aging like a fine wine just like such a good actor you probably hated though animal kingdom because it's your Australian Australian rivals right animal kingdom I adored I loved yeah Australia does good films yeah yeah that very dark movie great and uh they made a US did you you if you watched the US TV show I haven't done that instead of the Australian like mafia they moved into like long beach and they're like surfers oh really yeah does it work is it entertaining it's just sort of dumb I've I've watched a good amount of it yeah it's fun it's like sons of anarchy vibes I can completely picture what that would be yeah plus I imagine to draw it out for seasons you have to have like a million dumb little dramas going on and romantic sort of twists and turns where like one brothers the good guy and one and then by three seasons later yeah yeah the villain and this is still got like the really hot ass like matriacle kind of like mum and then doing everything they they end up doing like a flashback to how she got that way right and that character is played by Vincent and offrials daughter which cool Vincent and offrials also the man yeah I mainly admire Vincent for a tweet he did once about how allegedly pigs cannot look up and so look about that which I have for the kids oh my god essentially it's right they can't look up so the best thing you can do for a pig you lift it because they can't look up to the heavens lift to pick up let it see the sky yep so good uh John Oliver has it I haven't watched it but I can feel people already typing the emails he's also done an episode on the big six train companies that kind of run things in America and he looks at that I believe he talks to someone that was hit by a train in a car and is like involved in litigation and just how all for that process was yeah John Oliver does a much better job of making this show than we do he he really he's got a team of writers so no John when I'm when I'm putting either an episode for the show with you and I see that John Oliver has done it I'm like oh god yes but there were also times where John Oliver will do one after or we'll reference something that we've done it and I'm like oh cool we we did something that something is like traveled no I don't think it's travel I don't think it got to John Oliver that we did it um it was more than like oh this was relevant and this was worthy yeah we got one right like doing this topic yeah him and his team are insane what they do it's I think he's got the perfect fusion of entertainment and um advocacy and journalism all in the one I feel like some of those late night shows don't quite get the balance right he's just I mean it's amazing what he does thank god Jesus what in just how credible and well researched and like that it feels like every corner has kind of been looked at a million times and yeah there is something to be said I think what we've forgotten about with like things like newsrooms there are certain stories that can't be told by an individual or a small team like you need this massive team yeah to spend hours and hours how it's like painstaking shit and the stuff that he services well and they're all like god there's like brilliant comedy writers within that that find like little nuggets and we're like we'll do this and do a justice but also we found this really fucking absurd thing yeah that we need to point out also covers weirdly quite a lot of New Zealand content like he's kind of zoned it on New Zealand at times he got he got really um what the Russell Chrome deep into uh Russell Crust Australian um deep into a do you feel my heckles go out uh actually I kind of have a soft spot for Russell Crowe I quite like the guy we have a bird of the year competition in New Zealand um where our native birds are all at backed by a different celebrity or group to try and like win bird of the year as I vote a based and going to step in it now because I can't remember what bird he backed but he basically like got behind a bird that wasn't getting votes and just put it all over the show like he made a giant puppet of the bird and bought it on and that bird strangely enough um won the competition he's amazing okay feedback feedback now Rob I'm gonna be honest with you I haven't prepared for the feedback I'm just gonna open up that inbox no so close your eyes a little behind the scenes um I'm going away for a few days next week to to record some episodes for this podcast we wanted to reveal that it's we can reveal let's not reveal those you're in a mysterious place I'm going to a mysterious place I feel it's kind of get an anticipation up too high you know people think I'm going to I don't know I mean it's a pretty high bar as a highlight of like obscure American okay let's keep this in a bit bleep out when we say it great and so I don't have the we don't have the feedback for the episode that just aired right right so I'm just gonna go and pull out because the other interesting thing with the feedback is people so risingly aren't listening week to week some people are like three months behind and so we get feedback for older shows so I'm just going to open a few random ones Riley writes in with a subject line bourbon I'm a hundred percent here for David and Rob visiting a dude ranch for an episode I've not been to one but you can learn how to do farm chores as part of the guest experience my next recommendation bourbon bourbon can only come from a certain part of Kentucky otherwise is considered whiskey or another type of brown the cure I love the idea yeah a lot and even thought about bourbon before a lot of people writing in about dude ranch very popular part of the Nickelodeon universe hey dude you mean I don't follow hey dude was the name of the show they were on a dude ranch oh they're okay I understand dude ranch was a name of a blank one 82 album was her hey dude was popular in franchise still a lot of who does staff writing and Emily writes in I can talk to you about being a cow girl apparently the whole dude ranching has kicked off a lot of feedback I own a horse ranch just out of Idaho and have a lifetime of stories about ranch work back country writing while horse adoption and western writing I'm also particularly passionate about speaking out against the conservative stereotypes associated with cowboying I'm into this cow girl holy shit Emily I will be in touch this is great we both uh dabble the little bit in yellow stone early on right yes yes I watch season one of yellow stone drama a guy that was ended up being too much yellow stone yeah a little too much soap opera and I feel like a couple of spin offs a lot of spin oh my god you know that spawned of franchise yeah but it did try a different light on like ranching that I was aware of so I when she said that she owns a dude ranch and yeah that she owns a ranch and can I'm just imagined sort of a yellow stone drama so much drama in yellow stone so much drama remember that first episode like pilots are always amazing to watch because they haven't quite got it right but I remember there was like I think like a meth lab blew up who were like like the episode one of yellow stone a lot of shit went down and that Danny wrote in with the subject drawbreakers and of course this is in regards to my um candy episode candy episode here clearly
I want to tell you a little fun draw-breaking story when I was in college my mom found out she had sleep apnea was finally diagnosed when she worried that she was falling asleep during her drive to work with her 10 minutes from office. Needless to say safety was a concern. To lots of tests we found out her tongue was blocking her airway and she could be heels if they just made more room in her mouth for a tongue delay flat. The solution was jaw surgery where they had to break her jaws to move them forward. Here's a really fun part though. I'm just going to say when I's cold reading email like this. Usually when someone says here's the fun part it's either very fun or deeply long and boring and I don't know which way this is going to go. We're going to find out together. Here's a fun part though my sister was in high school and her bite was misaligned which would also cause potential breathing problems down the road insurance would cover surgery for her so she said why not and my mum and sister both had their jaws broken. This is great. This is a really fun aspect. They both needed braces to get things ready for surgery and would match the color of their rubber bands so cute. Is it? Imagine the jaw breaking to be very just violent and not precise. I would hope though if they're breaking your jaw they've got a way to do it. It's actually something I hadn't thought about. I sort of picture them like knocking me out and surgery and then it's like just punching me. That's what I'm imagining. You know but of course it'll be something to your mouth. No but it will be some very precise bone cutting or maybe there's a laser involved. I don't know because but are they? Yeah I guess they got a whole lot of cheek. You got scars then? Jesus. I can't. I mean how does it work? We still get a little fever but we still haven't figured it out. Okay Danny goes on. Lasers. I don't think it's lasers. I went confidently. When they moved my mum's jaw forward she essentially lost her chin. So they shaved a piece of the bone and stuck it perpendicular to her bottom jaw to make her a new chin. Now she has the hardest chin of anyone I know. Everything I read about this makes me deeply glad I'm not having my jaw broken. After the surgery their mouth's a wired shut. So they're living off milkshakes and mushy foods. I imagine my dad enjoy the quiet. Classic misogynistic food like gay gay. Dad being there finally. I'm a daughter, a guard talk. That's not what Danny was getting to but it's just a very funny scene. I imagine my dad enjoy the quiet but it was quite a scene and when a family friend came to the house she cried when she saw my mum's bruised wired face. When I eventually got a break from college to come home in a visit they no longer had their mouths wired shut. But we're almost unrecognizable. So I don't mean to love. It was as though my mum and sister had been replaced with super skinny chipmunk faced people. They both healed wonderfully and now look as beautiful as ever. My mum doesn't fall asleep randomly anymore and we joke that my sister has a $10,000 smile because she does. Thank you Danny. That was a roller coaster. Finally Mona Lynn. Roatson. Roatson, Wrightson. Dear David, I'm currently playing catch up on episodes today driving from Auckland to Toronto. This is in my home in New Zealand. I just hit play on the Milky Bar kid episode and just as your voice started the intro I realized I was driving into Bethlehem which is where I and I were not born. Not born there? No. I went to high school there. Then you told the story of the procedure on your gums and my jaw dropped because I did that exact procedure less than two weeks ago. Well hopefully your jaw didn't drop too quickly. They're re-oven any wounds and I gums. It's a real stretch but it's good. There was a stretch. I don't. Oh my god. The gum. One thing I wanted to mention when you were talking about pumpkins change of tech to another episode. Yes, there is something called pumpkin in New Zealand that people eat a lot of. We call it squash. It's not the orange variety that they have in North America. So in Rob says do you have pumpkins in New Zealand? The answer is no. Not the big orange ones you have. We do have something called pumpkins but they are different species of winter squashes with different textures, colors and consistencies. Oh yes, I would follow that up Mona Lynn. We definitely have pumpkins in New Zealand. We just we're not obsessed with pumpkins. That's what I'm saying. I didn't know about the Milky Bucket. I found the 10 minutes string of UK ads from the six seasons seven years of smart and where my way through them out to listen to the episode. The New Zealand one was the cutest. Have a great weekend and with that we come to an end of another packed episode of Flightless Buried. If you have feedback specifically in regards to our upcoming live shows, if you have any stuff, taxidermy or any other amazing items that would look good to dress the stage, you can attach with us.
[email protected]. If you have any stories about being in or near or around any kind of train drama involving trains and cars and lucky escapes and anything else, maybe you've been embroiled in litigation with a train company. I'd love to hear from you. Or maybe you smashed pennies on the railroad track. Yes. Maybe you did Rob's favorite pastime. Yeah. Yeah, really any train stories I'm kind of fascinated by. No, I think about it. I feel like it'll open up a whole new world. Yeah, it'll take us down another track somewhere. Rob, you sometimes you need to be fired from the show somehow, which I can't do because I don't have the power and without you, I can't make the show. But when you pull out the number of puns and annoying things that you do, come see us do that in Salt Lake City March 29th, Austin, April 2nd, Dallas, April 4th. We've got school music. Each of these shows, it's going to be fun. We have took a links in the show notes and also over in the links on our Instagram page, you can join our patreon patreon.com. And also patreon.com/fathersbird. Oh yes, don't patreon.com will be hard to find us patreon.com/fathersbird. We're also on YouTube. You might be listening to us now. If you want to watch and see the studio and you can get video on Spotify and video on YouTube, that's there. I keep forgetting to remind people about that. You can see David's healed gums. You can see my beautiful gums. I'm pulling my look right down now. You can see how good they are. You can see my wonky jaw because I'm not getting my jaw broken to fix it. And finally, it really helps us if you share the episodes and if you like and subscribe and give us a rating on Apple or Spotify, that just organically sort of throws us into the algorithm and other people might find the show. If other people find the show, it means more people listen to the show. It means we can spread our wings even further. That was a flight. To not fly. Doesn't quite work, does it? Yeah, okay. Ignore that one. I'll leave the panster Rob. See you next week. The lights are dimmed, which means we're recording after dark. I'm wearing a dinosaurs TV show t-shirt. Yes, I'd love to dinosaurs. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to talk about the show because I've been watching YouTube clips. It's just really weird and unsettling and odd. Yeah, I think it played it for Calvin and he was like, what is this? It just feels something's a bit off. The one thing I want to say about the show that blows my mind thinking about it is the finale of that show was a meaty or coming to hit earth. And so it's essentially like all these characters you fall in love with are going to die. I was talking with a friend in New Zealand. I hate him actually. He didn't and his wife Rach. They recently showed their two kids. I'm going to mess up their ages. They're little kids. K-pop demon hunters. They got terrified about an hour and the demons were too much. Really scary. The things etched into my brain. Some of those things etched in because they were scary and unsettling. With your kids, you obviously don't want to ski your kids. But what's the barrier of let them have some emotions and have a crazy experience and they're terrified with turning it off. The other day, I was watching Fallout in the basement. Yeah. They went down there for some reason, tried to turn it on the TV and Fallout started playing. Right. They both ran upstairs screaming. I'll just bolt it. Left the TV on, left Fallout playing and would not go back down there. Funny. It's so funny like what each kid finds scary as well, right? Because it's wildly different. Yeah.
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