Great Western Coffee Shop

Just spotted this on another (non-rail related) forum:

Lucky person indeed, a few feet towards her left and it literally would've sparked a call to the police!

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/14922359.Car_towed_off_railway_tracks_after_woman_drives_on_to_line_at_level_crossing/?ref=mrb&lp=1# (http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/14922359.Car_towed_off_railway_tracks_after_woman_drives_on_to_line_at_level_crossing/?ref=mrb&lp=1#)

Unfortunately, that's when one ought to give up driving....

Was there another incident to the photos? The article mentions a Vauxhall, the photos show a Toyota!

Or instead of irrelevant photos we have irrelevant descriptions

Should we be worried that it happens often enough that the wrong photo can be used?

It does not seem to be an isolated case.

The crossing and the next junction share the same (road) hatched box junction. One wonders whether drivers are therefore mis-reading their position and turning early into a darkened (railway) opening, before they realise their mistake. There are now no white gates with red triangles. Perhaps LC's need a specific warning road marking.

Train drivers make a similar, if opposite mistake when able to see successive signals; called "reading through". The nearer red doesn't register if the next one is green or yellow, until they see why the signal was red...

OTC

There was one of these at Brockenhurst a few years back, where a woman turned right onto the line rather than the road just before the crossing.  IIRC the car ended up on the points where the up loop and up main line come together, somewhere about half way between the island platform and the level crossing, it was quite amazing that the car didn't contact the third rail really.

Paul

Would a car coming into contact with third rail result in electric shock to occupants? Cars are pretty good Faraday cages.

Was that the one where the woman blamed Satnav rather than her own stupidity

A few years ago I'd have said there's no problem. Whatever touches the third rail would be continuously connected to the body and all the mechanical bits. However, there's now so many plastic bits in the body and in the mechanics too that the answer isn't so obvious.

So could the steering shaft be insulated for the body but connected to steering linkage parts also not well earthed? Maybe. I'd be surprised if it's in the product safety standards for cars.

PS: But then there would be problem with static generated by the tyres - so on balance at least parts round the wheels need to be earthed to the body.

Top gear did a test using 800,000w electricity to simulate lightening, maybe a similar scenario.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ve6XGKZxYxA

The volts serve to create the arc (though for lightning it's a bit more complicated than that), what matters in your car is the current that flows through the body. For typical lightning strikes here that's 5000-10000 Amps. That sounds high, but domestic mains is designed for a fault current level (think short-circuit) of 3000A. OHLE is now 6000A, I think.

There's a second stage, though. That current, flowing via the resistance of the car body (or whatever else lies between it and earth, or any two points within reach) creates a voltage (touch potential) and that needs to be low enough not to harm you (say 50V). It's not an exact science though.

Steel body shells ought to be OK, and but if you reach up to the top of a pillar and hold something else lower down you might be in trouble with a big arc/strike. But that's not very easy, as the surfaces are mostly insulating, at lowish voltages.

Old-fashioned fibreglass is, of course, no use at all. Carbon fibres do conduct, but over long distances only lengthwise. Composites vary a lot, depending on how the fibres are laid up. Making connections to them is tricky (even making sound fixing hard-points takes care). Aircraft composites have metal foils and coating applied, and go through some pretty thorough testing. they don't always survive entirely unscathed, but damage is superficial and not a threat. Car makers could exploit that knowledge, but I'm not sure if even Elon Musk has.