The fact is though these kids are the ones from the new Generation of children brought up to think its ok to walk in front of moving vehicles. Like the schoolkids who aimlessly wander in the road without looking etc. Looking at some of the nearmiss clips its obvious people are extremely thick and need something to stop them doing such stupid things. I'd love to agree with you that we dont need it, we shouldnt need it to be frank, but with people like that around we probably do.

I live in a village in Oxfordshire, and we have two level crossings. These are on the main London - Bristol line and trains hammer along a very long and straight stretch past us. People don't mess with trains here ... a full HS125 at top speed has a substantial kinetic energy and can't stop on a sixpence. Incidentally, after you've lived here for a few years you don't actually hear the trains, it gets sort of filtered out ...

Eventually Darwinism rules.

Where's "Over here"? Is it "Over there"?

The problem with that concept is that it allows precious little room for error or problem. If a train doing Xmph is only a few seconds away when it transpires that somebody or something is stuck on the crossing, or there is a fault with the barriers, etc etc, then that train is not going to stop. So, as much as it is frustrating when you sit at the barriers waiting, it is ultimately happening to protect your life!

As for the East Anglia situation, sooner or later some little idiot doing this will get hit by a train and splattered across his friend's faces. Not nice, but you'll probably find this craze will come to a fairly abrupt end around about then. Very little sympathy here for people who mess with railways I'm afraid, I just hope that the train driver on that day is one of the more emotionally resilient chaps.

Edited by happy polo on 03/08/2011 at 14:57