for people who don't use light rail that much. mount baker is an elevated light rail station. they had to like drive up into like 40 feet into the air.
From what I can tell, a Hi-Rail vehicle (basically a truck with a deployable wheel set for rail use) had to push her down to the crossing, where a tow truck towed her the rest of the way. I don’t think Sound Transit or Metro have a tow-capable vehicle, and there’s no safe way to get one up on the tracks
Oh, they are. I saw a fight because of a guy accidentally picking a pocket. It was so packed, coat pockets were close enough for the elderly asian man to reach into his too close for comfort neighbors coat, pull out a phone, look at it confused, then full barrage of a 6’ 5” black man punching him. When the police arrived, the asian man said he thought he was reaching into his own pocket. And still, no charges pressed by either party, no one injured by police, it almost restored a bit of my faith in humanity.
So KC Rail actually has what are called hi-rail trucks, some of which are equipped to tow or flat bed train cars or in this car pedestrian vehicles. Hi-rail; meaning they have both road tires and railway wheels that allow them to alternate between road and rail. While this is unfortunate, it's fantastic that no one was hurt and the Safety department will have a new incident example to present to onboarding classes 😂
That arrow is an overlay from Google Street View, you can click on it to proceed to the next 360 view down the road. It’s not actually there on the tracks.
Literally they kicked us off the train at stadium station and I saw this alert, I'm like how does that even make sense? Mt baker is a raised platform?? And I come here tbh, not surprised more impressed
She would have run a real chance of hitting a train head-on while it was at speed, with nowhere to go or get out. Train may not have been able to stop in time, coming that way its a blind curve right before you exit the east portal.
Idk if it derails or just yeets the car. My bus (not here, standard size) hit a car once and we barely felt it tbh. Relative mass makes a massive (sorry) difference. Unless you hit something that doesn't move like a building, once you're bus or train sized, as long as you're upright, you're usually OK.
I watched this happen. There was a guy banging on her window to get her to stop. She just kept going slowly down the tracks and then up the ramp from MLK.
Jebus those rails are RAISED all the way up, too. I'd never ridden that section and figured it was flat terrain until the station where she finally stopped.
All reporting I've seen and heard from the police scanner says that the woman is elderly so I'm assuming that she had some sort of medical episode which led her to both confuse the tracks as the way to go and to ignore people telling her to stop. Police scanner said that they took her to the hospital so I hope she's OK but I also hope she never drives a car again.
Unless her family takes her keys away, it's extremely unlikely the state will. Even full-on dementia patients get to keep driving. That's why we see stories frequently about seniors taking out entire groups of kids on sidewalks; it's not intentional malice...
The sad thing is, I'd hope good public transit means more of these seniors are willing to give up their licenses.
maybe this will make them consider adding guard-rails..
it's uncomfortably exposed in columbia city and south of there, nothing in between traffic and the trains
This is incredible. Somehow, someway, someone managed to drive for nearly half a mile (into the sky on a ramp mind you) from the intersection of MLK and S Walden ON THE TRACKS without getting stuck or realizing anything was wrong until they hit the station itself where the ground falls away from the rails beaching the car on the frame or else they probably would have kept going indefinitely or until they ate an oncoming train. Yes not only are they on the tracks, they are on the wrong side of them.
Truly a feat devoid of situational, spacial, and self awareness that I doubt will be topped for the rest of the year. How people like this manage to make it an entire day without offing themselves, let alone long enough to get a license is astounding. I truly hope they are ancient and confused or vision impaired because anything less would be just unthinkable.
Get a dash cam. You pass tens of these people every day on the road who will wail and scream that you’re at fault after they T bone you running a red and put on the most dramatic embarrassing enraging performance for whatever emergency services individual shows up first.
I was so amazed in that they made it all the way up there that it didn't even occur to me they're on the wrong side of the tracks until I read this comment!! The mind reels
Frankly a miracle they didn’t crash through what’s essentially a handrail on the overspan before the station killing themselves or worse some poor soul driving on MLK.
Exactly. Public embarrassment should be used as publishment again. We won't make you stand in a pillory but we need the top 10 upvoted questions answered.
They need to get billed for the removal and every minute of delay. These are licensed drivers, not braindead zombies. How do you even end up on the tracks at Mt Baker station and think, " Yep, this is a parking spot."
This can happen in a couple of ways. The normal way is that the city will bill the driver's insurance for, y'know, infinity dollars, and the insurance will pay what's covered on their policy. If the city's feeling particularly mad, they may go after the driver for more. Blocking transit like this can be treated as a crime, and the sentence can include criminal restitution. That's pretty rare in Seattle, though.
Remember the Amazon truck that crashed into light rail pylon last week? I guarantee that they're gonna go after Amazon for every last cent of that one.
*decades. This is inexcusable and unforgivable. It just gets worse and worse and the full story comes out. She drove through people trying to stop her, she had a dude risking his life, banging on her window as she climbed higher and begging her to stop, AND SHE. JUST. KEPT. DRIVING. Not only that, but she is taking zero responsibility and is threatening to sue the city, sound transit, and GPS (presumably Google or Apple maps) because it's somehow their fault. Someone like that is not capable of learning or improving. This goes so far beyond simple denial and shock.
Seniors don't lose their licenses unless their families steal their keys and/or beg their doctors to write a letter to get it revoked. Our country is OK with this and that's why we don't require that those over 60 get regular driver / vision exams to keep their licenses.
This is totally messing up my evening commute. You would not believe the bs I had to do just to get to angle lake from Seattle because one person is an idiot
Wait the car is facing south bound on the north bound tracks? This is a whole new level of idiocy, they'd have to cross the center lane heading north on MLK and then take the track way the entire way to the station. Whomever was driving this car was not in a good mental state, be it substances or mental issues I can't say, but seriously upsetting but also kinda hilarious.
FUCKING HOW??? When I first saw this I really didn’t wanna believe it. I’ve worked on the light rail for years and to reach that location with a car is a level of idiotic I didn’t think was even possible.
I was just explaining to my mother, visiting from Louisiana, that we had to close a major highway last weekend not because of road work, but because Seattle drivers would not stop driving up the wrong way of a highway to get around the closed ramps and drive on the closed highway. She thought I was nuts. I got the "vehicle on tracks" text half way through the story and now she gets to see this through my maniacal, depressed laughter. Point proven.
Probably not. I was in the union that was hired by obayashi to do the tunnel right by that stop. They're pinned in so tight by rail ties to maintain a very fuckin heavy "light rail" train. I think the difference between light and heavy rail is about 30 lbs per foot. Light rail is 90lbs per foot and heavy rail is 120 lbs per foot.
The unladen train cars weigh something like 10 passenger vehicles, so this would barely scratch the iron sitting on the plinths.
1.2k
u/reflect25 Jun 03 '26
for people who don't use light rail that much. mount baker is an elevated light rail station. they had to like drive up into like 40 feet into the air.