You could probably build a better “media bias detector” than all the lib bullshit projects just by recording what things get passive voice applied to them.
thats actually a good idea
the real life
A Metro Rail train has derailed after striking a vehicle in East L.A.
yeah man, i’m sure the rail car just went out of its way to strike the car
What do you mean, of course it did! It even crossed to another set of tracks to do it!
How dare that train drive on its tracks at a regular speed and route? Thousands and thousands of individual drivers of varying degrees of intelligence and impulse control can’t handle this level of chaos!
I like the implication that trains aren’t vehicles.
Or that the train is the one at fault. 40% of Trains strike their spouses, you know.
No? Where is that implied?
right in the headline, where it didn’t say “another vehicle”
Me: “I was complented by a guy I didn’t know”
You: so you must be a woman then.
It absolutely doesn’t imply that. YOU are reading into it.
Wording aside, how does a train get derailed by a car? A car would be - what - a tonne? A single coach of a train would be 10-20 tonnes.
I checked Wikipedia real quick:
The Los Angeles Metro Rail is an urban rail transit system serving Los Angeles County, California in the United States. It consists of six lines: four light rail lines (the A, C, E and K lines) and two rapid transit lines (the B and D lines)
Looking further, since this happened in Boyle Heights, and only Line E runs through there, it must have been a Kinki Sharyo P3010. The empty weight of one car is 45t. On pictures I can see there were three cars, so 140t (plus content) were pushing forward there. But only the first half in front of the articulation point of the first car derailed. Looking at the schema picture on the bottem here (PDF) it looks like there are three bogies. So I guess we can assume roughly 15t (plus content) would need to be bounced off the track.
I’ve seen the result of the same thing happening here in Zürich to our Bombardier Cobra light rail which weighs 39.2t. So I’m not that surprised anymore, but it is still impressive.
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What Barabas said
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You only need to derail ONE of the bogies/wheel sets of only one of the wagons for the train to be “derailed”. (After one bogie derails, if the train keeps moving, the whole thing will get fucked up). Bogies are usually in the ends of wagons, far from the centre of mass, so if you hit them with a car you have a lot of leverage to displace them.
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Trains can be intentionally derailed by the pilot as an emergency break, which makes sense if you don’t have enough space for breaking conventionally and (you calculate) the thing you’ll hit won’t get out of the way on time.
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The state of the rails can be really bad, which also helps derailments
You only need to derail ONE of the bogies/wheel sets of only one of the wagons for the train to be “derailed”.
Yes, it looks like the train in the image jack-knifed, suggesting it probably isn’t articulated. So the affected coach can be pushed off by itself, rather than being stabilised by the weight of the rest of the train.
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Anything getting lodged under the wheels of a train could be trouble.
The F1 racecar is shaped like a wedge, which lifted the train off the tracks and even got a little airborne.
I agree that cars get given cop voice, but this particular example I’m not sure how you could reword that sentence. I think I would say “train derails after striking x” regardless of what the object was.
Train derails after striking cow escaped from pasture. Train derails after striking fallen log.
How about “negligent driver causes trail derailment”
Active voice first.
“A car on the train tracks caused an East LA Metro train to derail”
I like hearing the important part first, here being “train derails”
Fair enough but establishing a causative form is critical here. As written, the train is to blame for striking the car in the same way a car is to blame for striking the pedestrian.
Train derailed by wayward car on tracks
Train derails due to car crossing a red light
Car crossing red light causes train derailment
Driver derails train with foolish and careless driving
