Jogging Woman, Listening To iPod, Loses Legs In Freak Train Accident

[matcom]

<snip>

POMPANO BEACH, Fla. -- A woman out for jog while listening to her iPod had her legs severed by a freight train because she may not have heard it coming, authorities said.

Cheryl Ann Risse, 32, was recovering at a hospital Friday.

Authorities did not know how she ended up in the path of the train Thursday morning, but rescue workers speculated she did not hear the locomotive coming because she was listening to her iPod.

Risse often jogged across the tracks on her way to a nearby park, said Keyla Concepcion, spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff's Office.

The train engineer didn't know he had struck Risse until he returned along the same tracks minutes later, Concepcion said.

A passing sheriff's deputy noticed her waving her arms.

http://www.wftv.com/irresistible/13631647/detail.html

[MissMillie]

1. I live across the street from a train

and I can FEEL the train when it's coming.

[cobalt1999]

2. I run with an ipod...

and I can hear cars approaching. How the hell loud was she playing the thing not to hear a train!?!

[MissMillie]

3. loud enough to be deaf w/i 6 months

I promise you.

[underpants]

4. I haven't done that yet

maybe it was all those years running in the city where you have to aware at each corner (really breaks up the flow) or because it was drilled into my head years ago to stay aware of what and who is around you.

Then again I recently trained myself to run with a watch on so

[cobalt1999]

6. A watch?

You need to raise your geek quoint and get one of these...


Distance/Pace/Elevation/Time/Splits all the data you really don't need, but the damn thing is cool anyway. Actually, I do like the pace readout. No Train warning though.

[underpants]

7. eh I got a $10 job from Kmart

It lights up!!!!

I used to have a thing about NOT timing runs. I do now but only to the minute I don't like running for time. Call me a purist.

[AllegroRondo]

9. is that the Garmin?

*drool*

[cobalt1999]

12. yes...I'm a sucker for toys.

It is most beneficial when running in new locations as it tracks distance. In a new city and want to get 5 miles in? No problem.

The other feature that saved me once was the backtrack feature. I went for a run early one morning in Waldorf and got totally lost. I just pulled up the correct display and followed my track back to the hotel...whew!

[AllegroRondo]

13. I got the Timex version

it tracks speed, distance, pace, and laps, but nothing as fancy as the Garmins. I may have to hint at that for Christmas.... Does it have a heart rate monitor?

I do like the fact that I can wear the Timex as an everyday watch and just add the GPS armband when I run.

[Rabrrrrrr]

5. A good lesson to turn the goddamned things down and stop bothering us with your f-ing noise

Sorry that had to happen, though - what an awful thing. I can scarcely imagine going through life without legs. Very, very sad.

[DS1]

8. I thought this behavior stopped at around 22

after everyone who would done already has

[supernova]

10. Wowl I never NEVER

tune out sourrounding sounds with my iPod. I keep it at the level of just a radio in a room. I can even hear people talking to me.

And this tragic accident is one of the chief reasons why. It didn't have to be a train, could be a bus, or car, or the odd deer. You just never know.

[Heidi]

11. Didn't the same kind of things happen with Sony Walkmans?

[DS1]

15. when music devices were miniaturized enough to cary around yes

there were certainly reports, and school announcements about not being an idiot and walking on the tracks with your Duran Duran blasting

[Heidi]

17. You'd think people would know better than to go hoofin' it down the railroad tracks

with their iPod or Walkman turned up so loud they couldn't hear an _oncoming_ train, wouldn't you? :sheesh:

When I was a kid, if my mom had caught me playing my Walkman (or any music via headphones) that loud, she would have killed me and saved me the pain of being hit by a train.

[tandot]

14. She might not have heard it, but how about looking before you cross train tracks?

[undeterred]

20. I always look and one time I saw a young child alone on the train tracks

Well he was 3-4 years old. He was walking in the middle of the train tracks wearing nothing but a "pullups" and there was nobody else in sight. He was about a block away, and there was no train coming, but I started running, because I really didn't want to be running for him when there was a train coming.

He got scared of me and got off the tracks. I picked him up and took him to the nearest business, where we called the police. He didn't speak any English. Had been left in the care of a 13 year old brother who hadn't missed him yet. While we were calling a train went by.

[eyepaddle]

23. See my post below,

but the worst story I ever heard was of a toddler just standing on the tracks, waving at the train crew as they tried desperately (and in vain) to wave him off the tracks. That guy was still pretty messed up about that, years later.

That was the single biggest reason I didn't apply for a job with the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad when I was finishing college. The work sounded okay, the money is really good, but the prsopect of seeing stuff like that was too unsettling.

[raccoon]

16. She obviously wasn't aware of her surroundings.

For the next person, it might not be a train, but another serial killer on the lookout for prey.

[Dragonbreathp9d]

18. doop

getting hit by a train that is on its tracks is just dumb

[triguy46]

19. based on 30,000 miles running over twenty years...

its too frickin dangerous out there to deprive yourself of one of your senses. A few years ago in Tulsa, there was a rapist who targeted women running with headphones, he could get behind them unnoticed so easily. You can't hear cars, you can't hear cyclist behind you.

[cobalt1999]

21. First off, great accomplishment.

I've been running regularly for about 7 years now. Hopefully in 13 more years I can say the same thing (it's amazing what approaching 40 will make you do).

The safest way I've found to use the ipod and run (beyond the obvious of keeping the volume down) is I download and listen to an audiobooks. With the spoken word there are lots of pauses even in the middle of a sentence. Like listening to someone talk next to you, you can still hear everything around you down to the birds chirping.

Music is more "encompassing" without gaps or pauses and people tend to play it louder.

[eyepaddle]

22. This has long been a real problem for the railroads,

it sounds like it was just the engine and maybe a few cars doing some local switching if the same engineer came back ina few moments. This would be a lot quieter than a fully loaded freight blasting by on the mainline.

I drove taxi when I was in college--in a small town with quite a bit of railroad activity--and railroad crews take a LOT of cab rides. It seems that running people over is a tragic, but commonplace part of the job, the engineer who hasn't run somebody over is a rare man.

[undeterred]

24. You know, at the time

I had no car, and I was walking a mile to the grocery store. The train that went by a few minutes later was a freight train and there is no way he could have stopped. So I was just elated that I was in the right place at the right time. I'll never forget that moment.

[eyepaddle]

25. Good job, by the way.

It hasn't come up--and I don't live very close to any tracks now, but I have to wonder if I would've been smart enough to even notice the child on tracks back when I was in my early 20s--or had the presence of mind to do anything about it.

It's a good thing YOU were the one who was there.

[skygazer]

26. Um.... what ever happened to LOOKING?

I don't think it would be physically possible for me to cross a street or a train track or anything else like that without looking first.

I feel so bad for the people on trains who have to live with the inadvertant part they play in other people's stupidity.

[Tyler Durden]

27. Solves those issues with the calves...n/t

[petronius]

28. Just more evidence that Apple is an evil right-wing company. Murderers!

[Roon]

29. As a hard of hearing person that rides the light rail

let me say this, I am aware, I am aware, I am aware!!! I have my ipod cranked because that is the only way I can hear it...but when I am on the tracks I look,then I look again....It's not hard.

[Mrs.Matcom]

30. Remember the kid that was killed in Ashland

a few years ago? He was jogging on the tracks, he lived down in Dad's old neighborhood. Very sad, but very stupid to run on the tracks!

[grace0418]

31. Just this morning while I was commuting to work I nearly struck a grown woman

rollerblading while listening to her iPod. She never even glanced behind her for one second before blading from the right side of the road to the left. If I had been going a bit faster or had been a bit closer it would've been tragic. She didn't even hear me slam on my breaks. Idiot.

I love my iPod and use it daily, but taking that kind of risk is absolutely reckless and unbearably stupid.

I'm very sorry Cheryl Risse wasn't as lucky as my rollerblading friend this morning.