File This Accident Story Under "Really Dumb Stuff People Do"

From: New York attorney Gary E. Rosenberg (personal injury and accident attorney and lawyer; serving Brooklyn Queens Bronx; Brooklyn Injury Lawyer) The date: September 8, 2008; the time: about 8:00 at night. Jose Silva, age 43, of White Plains, Westchester County, New York, was driving his son and nephew in his 2004 Saturn and following his G.P.S.-based navigation system. It told Silva to turn right, so he turned right. Right on to Metro-North railroad tracks. Now you know this wouldn't be much of a "Really Dumb Stuff People Do" accident story if Silva's car didn't get stuck on the train tracks, which it did: the car got stuck on the train tracks. Fortunately, Silva and his passengers fled his car before it got hit by a Metro-North commuter train, which stranded some 400 passengers for hours. Thankfully, no one on the train was hurt or injured. Some interesting asides: 1. Authorities gave Silva three summonses, claiming he had adequate warning of the presence of the train tracks. 2. Silva claimed that some seven minutes passed before the train crushed his automobile, and that he had called "911" to try to stop any trains. Metro-North said that Silva might have had a chance if he had dialed an MTA hotline number posted at the intersection - 888-MTA911PD, which would have cut steps out of the train-stopping process. (One wonders if an all numeric telephone number might make more sense.) 3. The same kind of car accident occurred on January 2nd, when a different driver, Bo Bai of Sunnyvale, California, made the same turn in a rental car at the direction of his in-car navigation system. He was not hurt in that incident, but was also ticketed for blocking the Metro-North tracks. Commentary: Moral of this story is, I guess, don't blindly follow your navigation system - but why should I even need to say this?