by Bob Walsh
Two women are suing the Canadian National Railroad and it's American subsidiaries for injuries. It seems their trains regularly block the streets in the teeming metropolis of Waterloo, Iowa for hours. This means people who want to move from one side of the tracks to the other have to either walk a mile to go around, wait a LONG time or climb between the train cars. That is dangerous as they don't know when the trains will start moving.
The two women, age 37 and 67, were injured doing this. They claim at least five other people have lost chunks of their bodies in this fashion at this location.
My first inclination would be to say "Don't Do Dumb Shit. This is dumb." However, if this happens a LOT one would think the locals have a legit beef and maybe the railroad should do something to relieve the situation. Technically they were probably trespassing. That being said sometimes property owners have a duty of care to trespassers.
2 comments:
Several years ago, the City of Houston was having a problem with a train stopping and blocking several streets for at least an hour almost daily. School kids were having to cross between cars instead of going out of their way or waiting. Eventually one was severely hurt or killed (I can't remember) trying to get across. The city was already fielding dozens of calls daily because of the train. The then and current law forbids a stopped train to block a street for more than 5 minutes. The Mayor went on the news and said the city had had enough. He warned the railroad not to block the streets again. They didn't listen.
Houston Police started boarding the trains and ticketing the engineers. Problem solved.
There are some people on whom subtlety is lost. Large corporations are often among those "people."
Post a Comment