Car Gets Hit by High-Speed Train after Barrier Rises Prematurely in Taiwan

Truck drivers do this quite often, as spending countless hours behind the wheel every week gets a little tedious. The result is usually millions of dollars of property damage and even loss of life.

But can you imagine what it’s like to be a train conductor and know that you are going to hit a 10-ton truck that’s still hundreds of meters away. There’s no time to stop, so you have to duck under the dash and hope you don’t die. Awful stuff!

Next up, we are going to look at a crash where a third element is to blame. Neither the driver nor the train is to blame. Even though no train has passed, the four barriers go up, and cars begin to pass. However, within a few moments a high-speed bullet train comes.

News reports suggest the train detection system in Taiwan was screwed up by a recent typhoon. The TEMU1000 train was passing through Taichung City and doing speeds of around 130 km/h (80 mph).

The driver escaped unharmed, and the Taiwan Railway Administration has promised to compensate him for the damage to his car. It could have been a lot worse, as the minivan on the left crosses the tracks less than a second before the train. Had the timing not been right, the accident would have been a fatal one.

While the driver doesn’t scream or shout, you can tell that he’s been shocked by the crash. At the 35-second mark in the video, you can hear him putting on the handbrake. That is the very definition of a brush with death, and he must have been thanking the gods for his lucky escape.