[*BCM*] cyclist killed at train crossing

[Anne Wolfe]

While without question I totally feel for the family in this circumstance, I'm not sure
how train whistles would have save this kid.  The gates go down for a reason.  People die
frequently when they ride around the dropped arms and ignore the blinking lights, whether
it is in a car, a bike, or even if they walk.
Anne

--- Dan Barrett <dbx at sack.dreamhost.com> wrote:

> /*
> Note the key part: Beverly's ban on train whistles cannot be reviewed, 
> because the accident did involve a car
> */
> 
> 
> Bicyclist, 14, killed near train crossing
> Officials say boy rode around gate
> 
> By Steven Rosenberg and Mac Daniel, Globe Staff  |  October 14, 2004
> 
> BEVERLY -- Darting away from his mother and younger sister yesterday while 
> riding his mountain bike to school, 14-year-old David Siljeholm rode 
> around the dropped arms and blinking lights of a railroad crossing gate 
> and was struck by an inbound MBTA commuter train, dying instantly, 
> authorities said.
> 
> 
> 
> Siljeholm, whose family recently moved from Melrose to 
> Manchester-by-the-Sea, died about 50 yards from the crossing at Hale and 
> West streets in Beverly Farms at about 7:45 a.m., with his mother and 
> sister arriving at the scene seconds later, unaware of what had happened, 
> officials said.
> 
> 
> 
> Beverly is one of the communities in Massachusetts that have been granted 
> state permission to enact whistle bans and opt out of regulations that 
> require trains to sound their whistles for at least three blasts before 
> every street-level railroad crossing. That means that no whistle was 
> sounded as the commuter train approached Siljeholm, according to 
> preliminary reports on the accident by the Federal Railroad Administration 
> and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
> 
> 
> 
> Joe Santoro, who was working on a road construction project near the 
> crossing, said he heard the accident and immediately rushed toward the 
> train.
> 
> 
> 
> "I heard a loud crack, and I said to my truck driver, 'The train just hit 
> something,' " he said. "Then we saw papers floating down, and we ran over 
> and saw the bicycle and the kid on the tracks."
> 
> 
> 
> Seconds later, he said, he watched the boy's mother and sister cross the 
> tracks on their bicycles. "She came up and said, 'What happened?' " 
> Santoro said. "I told her some kid just got hit by a train, and she said, 
> 'Oh my God, that's my son.' "
> 
> 
> 
> Steve O'Connell, spokesman for Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. 
> Blodgett, said yesterday that the accident remains under investigation.
> 
> 
> 
> "He had sprinted ahead of us," said the boy's mother, Anita Siljeholm, who 
> was accompanying her son and daughter, Marian, to school when the accident 
> occurred.
> 
> 
> 
> According to O'Connell and officials of the MBTA and the railroad 
> administration, the gates at the crossing were down, and warning lights 
> were flashing at the time of the accident. The MBTA and the federal agency 
> also said bells were ringing.
> 
> 
> 
> The accident occurred less than a mile from the Cape Ann Waldorf School in 
> Beverly Farms, a private elementary and middle school where Siljeholm was 
> in the eighth grade. School officials said that parents, students, and 
> faculty were reeling from the news.
> 
> 
> 
> "He was the kind of son every mother would want to have," Anita Siljeholm 
> said in a brief interview in front of the school. "He was a wonderful, 
> warm, kind, intelligent, loving child. We will always, always remember 
> that and honor him; honor his kindness and his humor and his wisdom. He 
> was a wise child."
> 
> 
> 
> In addition to his mother and sister, the teenager leaves his father, Jorn 
> Siljeholm, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who 
> worked in Iraq as a United Nations weapons inspector prior to the US 
> invasion; and a brother, Eivind.
> 
> 
> 
> By midmorning, parents had flocked to the Waldorf School, where stunned 
> students hugged one another and grief counselors mingled in classrooms and 
> hallways. Federal Railroad Administration spokesman Warren Flatau said 
> yesterday that the fatal accident at Hale Street probably will have no 
> impact the community's ban on train whistles, because it involved a 
> bicycle and not a motor vehicle.
> 
> 
> 
> If the accident had involved a motor vehicle, Flatau said, the ban could 
> have been reviewed.
> 
> 
> 
> Peter Johnson -- who with his wife, Joan, established a website, 
> www.beverly-blast.org, which opposes federal efforts to eliminate whistle 
> bans -- lives about three-quarters of a mile from where the accident 
> occurred.
> 
> 
> 
> He said he was disturbed by news of Siljeholm's death. "It causes me 
> pause," he said. "I'm really distraught for the parents."
> 
> 
> 
> He added, however, that he still supports banning whistles and pointed out 
> that opponents are not arguing against them on safety grounds. If the 
> whistle ban was not in place, Johnson said, there would be 2,040 whistle 
> blasts per day in Beverly. One alternative for safety at the crossings, he 
> said, would be to install four-way crossing gates at all 17 crossings in 
> Beverly, at an estimated cost of $225,000 each.
> 
> 
> 
> Beverly has 17 at-grade crossings, the largest number in the state, 
> Johnson said. Whistles are banned at all of the intersections. According 
> to Federal Railroad Administration records, Beverly has had no accidents 
> the agency classified as relevant in the five years before December 2003. 
> Since 1975, the earliest year of data in the railroad administration's 
> federal accident database, there have been no fatal accidents at the 
> crossing where Siljeholm died, Flatau said.
> _______________________________________________
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> 

=====

"I wish in the city of your heartyou would let me be the streetwhere you walk when you are mostyourself." - Robley Wilson

 

 









		
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