According to the news reports I heard on KNX and KFWB this morning, the mulitple suicide attempts were attempted in roughly a twelve hour time span leading up to the accident. Apparently, he drove his car to an area where cars are not normally driven, parked on the tracks, and his Cherokee was stuck on the tracks.

The story made me sick this morning when I woke up.

Why the hell couldn't he have just driven off a cliff in an unpopulated area? Or driven off a pier or something? 10 people are dead because of this selfish asshole. :mad:

I realize that, when you are in such an extreme mental state as to want to try to kill yourself, you don't think objectively about anything else. But, this guy just ended up with tragic results in the extreme! Now, he's a mass murderer as well as a coward. I'd WANT to kill myself at that point - and now he's in custody and can't. I bet he's suffering - and sorry, but good for him. He deserves it.

I hope that there is no more loss as a result of his selfish actions and may the justice system do it's job - insanity plea or not. My heart goes out to the friends and family of those who died or were injured.

:Sigh: I finally had time to go read the news. The train that hit the Jeep sideswiped another train coming in the other direction causing both trains to derail and in the process also knocked over a freight car. It also said that the Jeep was "stuck on the tracks".
Or gotten out of his Jeep and just stood infront of the train. Wouldn't have caused any accident when he jumped out of the way.

Such a horrible tragedy. My heart goes out to all that suffered because of this one man's selfish and foolish act.

On a black humor note...think this will be Jeep's next ad campaign? One jeep derailed 2 trains!

It really is a sad sad situation.

But I've been thinking about this all day. If some form of rail transit is to remain in this country, can't we come up with something that can stop a train in a relatively short distance? I know I'm not an authority on this but I've heard it can take miles to stop a really heavy freight train, probably much less to stop a commuter train.

Whatever we have now it was not enough.

So now we have 10 dead and 200 injured. Will anything change? I suspect not and it breaks my heart.

Does that make me a bleeding heart? Or a soft headed liberal? Or somebody that would really like to solve the problem?

And GD demonstrates the concept of "too soon."

The Los Angeles Times has an excellent article on their web site. The link may require you to register to view the article.

I agree. Hey, GD - can I please use your head as a bongo for a moment? :p

:bonk: