Mendon, Missouri | Hacker News Reader

Mendon, Missouri

seandietrich.com

491 pointsh2odragon192 comments

I have witnessed something quite similar. During the flash-floods in 2021 in Germany, locals in the Ahr region absolutely rose to the occasion. Farmers were evacuating people in head-high water with their tractors during the night, local restaurants were already providing hot food and water the next morning wherever they could reach, pharmacies were loading whatever they had available on ATVs to somehow get much-needed medicine down precarious mudpaths. Local construction companies were already clearing rubble and building emergency bridges out of it. One Excavator was just basically standing in the middle of the river and ferrying people and rescue partys across. The local racetrack basically just organized everything while politicians were still playing the blame game. When our local firebrigade was officially pulled back from active duty because we lost one of ours during rescue operations in the first day, basically everyone just went down again and just tried to do whatever was possible. Absolutely stunning what people will do when they are face to face with disaster. I freely admit that I was crying like a little girl when I first saw the endless columns of Bundeswehr, THW, Fire Brigades, Farmers, basically everyone who could just streaming to help people they never met but were neighbors and friends for me.

Sorry for the rambling, but I am still not emotionally disconnected enough from it to concisely talk about it.

Yes. I think people are good overall.

I think the biggest reason people in small towns may be a bit quicker to help is that people in cities are a little conditioned by the bystander effect to assume that people around them, or the authorities, are better equipped to help.

But any random individual asked for help in a city is likely to go well beyond their duty and be quite helpful.

> or the authorities, are better equipped to help.

It's not just "equipped to help". It's also that random untrained people can do more harm than good. Hell, even random trained people can do more harm that good when there are too many people around.

I'm not a medical professional, but I have some first aid training and have been the most-trained first responder in not-even-crowded areas on a few occasions. Even with only 10 people around, managing the crowd while providing care becomes difficult.

The article even mentions:

> “It was a wonderful problem to have,” said school district superintendent, Eric Hoyt, “but we probably had too many volunteers show up.”

In a town of 171 people. Just 171 people, and crowd management became a problem.

Now drop into Manhattan, with approximately 1.629 million more people. If "everyone" showed up to an incident, you'd have at least an order of magnitude more deaths from the stampede to help than from the original event.

People in dense cities move away from the scene of an accident in order to get out of the way, which in most cases is genuinely the best thing they can do to help.

Yah-- I'm not even quite talking about that, though. Whether someone else is better qualified to help in a given circumstance or not, we're conditioned to not get involved because someone else will. Hence, the bystander effect, which stops people from being helpful even when they could.

I have first aid training, too, and my impulse is not to rush to help but to look around at other people and see if they're going to do something.

> I think people are good overall.

Until a certain amount of sacrifices have to be made. Then things start getting tribal. The sacrifices do not even have to be material, simply sacrificing or losing socioeconomic status relative to others is sufficient.

I have found otherwise good people are capable of intentionally doing awful things to another human, even if you have known someone almost your entire life, a switch flips and it is like a full psychopath is unlocked. Many only need the moral cover, certain they are right, to say and do awful things to another.

This was always true but it seems to me that social media, in all its forms, not only takes your privacy, it also takes your empathy. At the root of many mental health disorders exists narcissism and for the past few decades an increasing number of people have been added to the empathy erasing internet hate machine.

Just look around, the proof is everywhere.

The proof of kindness is everywhere, too. Just look around.

In most cases people see what they prefer to see. Their response to such impossible questions tells you more about them - how they see the world, their sense of life - than it does humanity at large.

I agree, this is a hard subject, whether people are good or not. I've always believed we're all capable of doing good under certain conditions, but let most get out of their comfort zone and they'll turn on you like a mad dog. (sorry) Proof? just look at our political scene the last 5 plus years. I won't debate any thing ideologically anymore with co-workers, they simply default to anger when you press them to explain how they feel and why about any difficult ideas.

> >Yes. I think people are good overall.

> Until a certain amount of sacrifices have to be made.

I remember some political philosophy online course from some reasonably reputable American college that was quite nicely set up - it had a lecturer and two token students (a man and a woman). At some point the lecturer asked the students (IIRC the topic was anarchism) if they thought that people were fundamentally basically good - the man was like "yeah I think people are basically good", the woman said something along the lines of "Well, I grew up in Yugoslavia, so not really..."

Retake political science please.

The advent of the agricultural revolution, the telegraph, and the teletype each resulted in massive increases in "tribal size". To the point that after the teletype, it was a bipolar cold war.

So I don't think you have any qualifications to say a single word in this matter.

I have no idea what your comment is trying to convey, but to help clarify my comment, this might help:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lbj-convince-the-lowest-wh...

I posit that at the root of all societal friction is the widening income/wealth gap within the US, along with shifting socioeconomic statuses with some losing ground and some gaining ground.

Note that people are in many tribes of many sizes simultaneously, and constantly shifting priorities and allegiances as it suits them, and trying to figure out others’ priorities and allegiances.

> I posit that at the root of all societal friction is the widening income/wealth gap within the US,

Why would you think this when there is little meaningful difference income-wise between Democrats and Republicans?

A significant chunk of the US votes on single issue matters that have nothing to do with economic status (abortion, gun rights).

I don't agree that the root is the income/wealth gap, but it certainly is playing a big role in the divide.

> little meaningful difference income-wise between Democrats and Republicans?

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-stu... is striking-- and when you look into the sub-demographics of the lowest and highest band it gets more interesting still-- e.g. that 27% in the lowest income band is shockingly rural.

>certainly is playing a big role in the divide.

The only divide is in whether it’s something that is even a problem that needs to be addressed. Income inequality doesn’t divide people itself, just the focus on it does.

> Income inequality doesn’t divide people itself

I don't agree. We're increasingly divided along lines that are very well correlated with demographic factors. Like, age, sure, but also income, religion, race, etc.

And the link makes it pretty clear income is a pretty strong predictor of political leanings. (And when you combine income + rural/urban split, it's a very strong one).

In other nations (e.g. Mexico, Peru, Ghana, Thailand, etc.) health care is provided to all. In USA lots of people can't afford any sort of health care. The family left behind by someone who dies at 48 because he couldn't afford e.g. blood pressure medication doesn't need any sort of "focus" to see the divide.

Health care is just the starkest illustration of this. One sees the same phenomenon with any other necessity: housing, food, transportation, etc.

What is shocking about it? Rural is by nature less efficient than high-density urban. Less productive. Everything costs more and pays less because rural living isn’t as “good” (in the ways that relate to income/velocity of money) as high density living.

You trade off dollar wealth green wealth: more trees, bigger land, less crowding, cleaner air, quieter environment, private living. The costs are in Longer drives, higher prices, less selection, lower pay, greater energy use, potentially far fewer cultural/educational/social opportunities.

I don't understand how what you said here relates to what I said. I didn't say that lower income people are more rural; I said that if you look at the left leaning subset of the lowest income people, they are very urban, and the right leaning subset of the lowest income people, they are very rural.

> A significant chunk of the US votes on single issue matters that have nothing to do with economic status (abortion, gun rights).

I wonder if the design of our so-called democracy has something to do with it. It's funny how this major foundation of our society escapes scrutiny, and it is mostly only the players within it who get any attention.

I don't see how his comment justifies yours-- either your reading of it (I don't see any claims about "tribal size" in his comment, and I'm sure we're all aware that there's a whole range of affiliations we have from large-- 'Murica-- to small-- HN fans) or the vitriol.

Be kind, please.

Your comment has broken the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do that, so could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? We definitely don't want swipes or flamebait in HN comments.

speak for yourself

Tribes are actually very benevolent and certainly helpful to many strangers that in their eyes seek help. There have been numerous incidents all around the world where poor tribals have come and nurture a sick stranger back to life. It is basic human nature.

I am using a more generalized definition of tribe, to mean any group you belong or you categorize others to belong to. For example, my first priority tribe is my kids. Second priority tribe is probably kids and spouse. Then kids, spouse and myself. Then my siblings, and parents, and then maybe friends/extended family/members of my parents’ immigrant diaspora/my college class/neighbors/political allies/business partners/countrymen/etc.

It is a poor choice of words then if you have to disregard the actual tribes in the world.

> But any random individual asked for help in a city is likely to go well beyond their duty and be quite helpful.

Fortunately yes, though I think I'd still give the edge to small towns for this. In cities, people are a lot more wary of being scammed, since it happens more often in areas with more people.

Having gone small town to “the city,” my interactions with other humans are by and large a net negative to the point that it’s almost better for one’s sanity to not involve outside of whatever communities you have therein.

Having spent a decade now here, it feels a bit like when you’re getting a cavity ground out at the dentist and they finally hit the nerve. Spending time away, “back home” or in some other tight-knit society only seems to fill it in for it to be ground back down.

For the folks that can and do thrive in “the city,” I find it fascinating on how we must differ in mind and spirit.

I am with you here! There are lots of things I enjoy about living in the city, but ultimately I would also rate it as a net negative for my quality of life.

After almost 10 years of it, my family is finally taking the plunge and we are getting out. (Hooray for remote work and StarLink!)

There is no bystander effect. It was a theory invented and spread by the NYPD to take the spotlight off the fact that they didn't respond to calls reporting a murder in public.

> Philpot et al. (2019) examined over 200 sets of real-life surveillance video recordings [across 3 countries]...they found that intervention was the norm, and in over 90% of conflicts one or more bystanders intervened to provide help.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

Citing wikipedia, and cherrypicking one of the few pieces of research that partially argues against the effect in the massive article, is dubious.

The study you cited, indeed, doesn't deny the bystander effect that each person becomes less likely to help as more people are present. It just argues that in the most dangerous situations, the odds of someone intervening goes up slightly as the number of people increase. See https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/134891/1/Would_I_be_He...

I can tell you, my probability of intervening is lower the more people that are around. The total probability of someone intervening may go up or down based on a lot of circumstances. This is consistent with many individual research findings and meta-analyses, e.g. https://asset-pdf.scinapse.io/prod/2107050526/2107050526.pdf

As other people point out, it is rational and even helpful to be less inclined to intervene when more people are around and are likely to be able to help.

I cited wikipedia as that's where I learned that the "bystander effect" was a PR campaign invented by the NYPD in 1964, an interesting fact I thought to share. It states this in the first paragraph, then cites the study I chose to quote in both the next paragraph, as well as again later in the entry. I didn't cherry pick it, it's the main thrust of the page, and the largest study of its kind. In 219 observed disputes across 3 countries, the only times no bystander intervened were when couples were arguing amongst themselves, or when a thief was the one being beaten up.

It's hardly the main thrust of the page.

I linked the study above. Note that the individual probability of intervention falls as the number of people goes up (and the study you cited mentions this).

In some situations, it looks like the total probability of any intervention goes up as the number of people increases. In other situations, it looks like it goes down. The paper cited to produce that couple of sentences on Wikipedia makes the distinction quite clear and does not dispute the individual probability of intervention falls: https://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/134891/1/Would_I_be_He...

Note that it quite clearly says that it does not refute the bystander effect: ". It is important that by examining intervention on the situational rather than the individual level, our research does not evaluate whether bystanders are less likely to provide help when in the presence of other bystanders compared with when they are alone (i.e., the bystander effect). "

I agree and don't dispute the Kitty Genovese thing was bullshit, but the bystander effect-- a reduced probability for individuals to respond when more people are around-- is one of the most replicated findings in behavioral psychology.

As to the probability of someone intervening-- it looks like the odds are best when a small number of people are around vs. property crime, and best when a large number of people are around vs. dangerous/emergency situations. Also, the efficacy of the latter intervention, assessed by victims, seems to fall as the number of surrounding people increase.

This is all well discussed in the wikipedia article and in the text of the particular study you're relying upon.

How do you know people in smaller towns are quicker to help?

I don't know it, I say "may be" quicker to help.

It does seem likely, given what we know about bystander effect. In cities, we're conditioned to expect someone else will take care of whatever's wrong, and this is less true in rural environs.

Thank you for bringing this up, it was the parallel story that first popped into my mind as well, as this was a national tragedy of rare proportions.

To me the amount of people streaming from everywhere in the entire country (!) to help fix up a region that has been struck with disaster moved me to tears more than once now.

And the happier I am about this circumstance, the angrier I get at politicians and some media.

Indeed. Any cursory observation of human behaviour will disprove the Thatcherian maxim that people only ever do anything for their own selfish interest.

> And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual. At least not within the national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town.

It also isn't unusual in the cities. Humans are wonderful and terrible everywhere. It reminds me of the 30 Rock episode where Jack and Liz go to Georgia to find a new comedian in touch with the "real America" and Liz keeps insisting that all Americans are real Americans and there is no "real America."

The acts of people after 9/11 in NYC remind us of the good in humans just as this small town inspires us.

As Mr Rogers said, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live.

My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of death, in big cities is like people don't die because you don't know about it. Although it may sound macabre I think that knowing about death helps me better understand being alive.

smaller communities exist in big cities too. They might be neighbourhoods like a small town, or interest, cause or activity-based. The trick is not to defer to government to provide them for you, which I think is harder in big centers.

Harkening back to the GP post: Mr. Rogers Neighborhood was based on a city neighborhood, not a small town.

Seasame Street, as well.

This is very true - some apartment buildings have great community (of course, plenty don’t). Demographics certainly drive part of the distinction, but just having a person step up and do the barest amount of leadership is also critical.

> Although I agree with it I think that small towns have something that is lost in big cities which is the sense of community, and that is simply because in towns you know every single person that has some impact in your daily live. My family is from a small town who moved to the city right before I was born and there is something my mom said to me when I was a kid that got stuck in my mind which is the awareness of death, in big cities is like people don't die because you don't know about it.

Cities have plentiful and varied communities, but it's easier to be lost in the masses. Many people lose empathy amongst so many other humans, or so some claim.

I was raised in a small town. Every coin has its other side. "Every single person has an impact on your life." Certainly if the community disapproves of your appearance, skin color, or religion, they can ostracize you, they'll each take turns with their individual impact to turn your life to shit.

Small towns can be bucolic, beautiful, and communal, however your mileage may vary dramatically from in-group to in-group and tribe to tribe. Beware your own scarlet letter, whether it's your skin color, religion, or otherwise.

> Although it may sound macabre I think that knowing about death helps me better understand being alive.

Wise words.

I think it's a basic feature of human nature that every ingroup has an outgroup.

Sure. But in a big city, you'll find that groups you're "out" of don't affect you as much.

In a small town, if the town is the ingroup, and you're the outgroup... you're going to have a bad time.

Yeah, I think that's the pro & con of living in a "real community".

> Small towns can be bucolic, beautiful, and communal, however your mileage may vary dramatically from in-group to in-group and tribe to tribe. Beware your own scarlet letter, whether it's your skin color, religion, or otherwise

Totally agree and that is probably one of the reasons I never went back to my town. Sense of belonging and tribalism definitely comes with drawbacks but also builds a feeling of having to stay together to move forward which is what makes that things like the post happen.

That sense of community comes roaring back in times of calamity.

I've only ever lived in cities or suburbs. During a major calamity, those of us in the city drove out to a small town that was nearly wiped out and gave supplies, money, and time. When our own city was hit by an extremely damaging and deadly storm, we took care of our neighbors (generators for refrigerators, places to sleep, help with repairs, food, etc), even if we had just met them for the first time.

The downside of the small town community is if you are not accepted in it. There is no alternative.

In cities, you have many communities, and if you aren’t accepted in one you can find another.

A fishing community / island in Maine I know of, forced a thief and their family off the island by completely withdrawing all assistance.

You cannot live on an island in Maine without community

I'm old enough to have experienced the slow, quiet, patient love of Mr Rogers first hand; I'm not sure it's able to rise above today's noisy fears? I hope I'm wrong.

I'd sadly say that the trust and love for community(especially in cities) has waned quite a bit, even in gentrified areas I see parents afraid to let their kids walk to the store. l'd say it's another casualty of the typo of journalism this article mentions, all fear no friends.

30 Rock also spoofed the "Subway Hero". A real story of a person falling on the tracks from a seizure and bystander jumped down and pressed them both into the track well while a train ran over them. There's alway bystanders and I'm sure the dynamics of a small town are different. Especially when a rush hour subway platform might have more people than Mendon.

I agree. One of the things that was visible to me as a transplant to Houston was how much city pride there was in how people came together after Harvey, even years after.

When I lived in Chicago I saw the aftermath of a car/moped accident up close. I had just gotten off the L at Western and was walking to the north exit. To my right was a moped turning left under the tracks and to my left was a sedan driving out of an alley, also turning under the tracks.

I heard a crunch and a group of people at the exit all jumped and rushed over. I hadn't seen the actual accident, but feared the worst. Once I was street level the group that had rushed over had already called 911, was comforting the person on the moped (they were fine, at most concussed), and directing traffic around the accident. I ended up leaving because there wasn't anything to do and didn't want to get in the way.

60 seconds was all it took for a group of strangers to provide an overwhelming amount of help.

Walking home, I heard the siren of the ambulance, but that eventually faded as I walked another block or so, the scene of the accident swallowed by the vastness of the city.

I probably walked past a couple hundred people or so that evening, all of them unaware of what had happened under Western, yet filled with the hope all of them could provide an overwhelming amount of help.

Which of the 5 Western L stations? :) (I assume the one in Bucktown/Logan Square)

Oooh, you jogged my memory. I actually meant the Damen station, down at the 6 corners. I did also use the Western station at Logan Square often though :)

“It also isn't unusual in the cities.”

yes it is. last week i saw a homeless man follow a woman onto a packed train, scream in her face and throw her across the train, and nobody did anything. i’ll let you guess the races of the victim and the attacker. this was on the L in union square. no one cares. this country has been dying for decades and it’s almost completely dead

For some reason this reminded me of the Ray Bradbury story, "The Town Where Noone Got Off" which is a dark little story indeed about two men and a small town on a railroad line. This one is a bit more positive.

However, it turns out this whole incident was apparently due to the lack of a railroad crossing guard system of any kind at the intersection. The most basic system has flashing lights warning of oncoming trains, and even that wasn't present.

https://www.kwch.com/2022/06/30/amtrak-derailment-places-spo...

In that respect it's also a story about the poor state of American infrastructure.

Interestingly, it's the line operator that usually has to establish and maintain those according to federal and (whatever) state guidelines might exist.

I believe that this is incorrectly simplistic, if only because these sorts of situations by definition exist at the interface between a railroad and either a private or government road. Having the line operator (which I'm taking to mean railroad owner, in this case BNSF) bear 100% of the burden of providing full crossing protection creates an unbalanced situation (in terms of the cost to be borne). I'm not an expert, but have been following a forum thread on this topic (this Amtrak-truck collision and how to prevent repeats)[0] which points to articles stating that this particular crossing has been "on the list" of not the RR owner (BNSF) but MODOT (Missouri [state] Dept of Transportation) for receiving a "crossing gates and lights" (automated protection) deployment, and that the cost of this prospective deployment is approximately USD400K (per crossing) which would be shared by the state (MODOT) and BNSF, and that, as noted by others posting in this thread, there are a large number (probably the majority) of RR/road crossings in the state (and country) which are similarly unprotected, and whose low use rate has historically not justified the installation and ongoing maintenance costs of full crossing protection. A cynic on the linked[0] thread mentioned it was possible that MODOT had put every unprotected RR/road crossing "on the list" to receive a full protection equipment deployment, so that in case of any similar accident, they could claim to "already be working on a solution, just didn't get there in time" as in bureaucratic CYA.

Given the costs involved, IMO it would probably be better to close at least half of the crossings in (e.g. relatively flat farmland) areas where the road grid incurs these crossings at a rate more than one per mile. But as with decisions to spend money, choosing which crossings to close (ostensibly so that the remainder may have automated protection added) becomes a political "hot potato" that can easily cause the process to stall.

[0] https://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/292768.aspx

[1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263049...

This cost sharing hot potato is itself part of the problem. It's ridiculous to have privately-owned infrequently-used tracks having precedence over well-used public roads, and then making mitigating the resulting contention into a shared responsibility. It's akin to someone putting up a yield sign on the road next to their driveway, and then just pulling out without caring because they technically own up until the center of the road.

Rather BNSF et al should be paying for the full cost of their own infrastructure, either by building out the necessary safety devices or simply ending the full-speed aspect of the crossings they don't want to pay for. And I say this as someone who like trains, has taken the Southwest Chief cross country a few times, and wishes we had more passenger rail in general.

The RR line on which the collision near Mendon, MO occurred is the furthest thing from "infrequently-used tracks"; these tracks are part of the "BNSF Southern Transcon[tinental]" line[0] between Los Angeles, CA and Chicago, IL, which carries (per previously linked Trains Forum thread: "Posted by tree68 on Thursday, June 30, 2022 7:59 PM") "The FRA/DOT crossing data shows over 50 trains a day..." (wikipedia[0] provides a higher number). And the vast majority of the BNSF Southern Transcon in MO (and elsewhere) is double-tracked, meaning trains can (and usually do) run near full track speed (90 mph in my understanding) without the frequent need to stop for opposing-direction traffic as would be typical on single-track lines.

Also, I don't know if you were applying the term to the road of the crossing involved in this crash, but this road is not one I would characterize as "well used"; more like "exceedingly rarely used" (thus the lack of active crossing protection).

Finally according to the previously referenced Trains Forum thread ("Posted by blue streak 1 on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 11:32 AM"), the railroad existed 60-70 years prior to the road in question. I believe it is this circumstance which places the onus on MODOT to defend the users of their later-arriving road from hazards associated with rail traffic on the preexisting BNSF line (with BNSF being an involved party).

I understand citing posts another public forum does not necessarily meet the gold standard of citations, but all of these facts align with my preexisting understanding of the situation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Transcon calls out Mendon, MO as a station on the Marceline subdivision

I was talking in generalities. As I said in another comment, I'm in a more dense region where level non-gated crossings tend to be branches for factories and the like. So I've seen plenty of roads that are decorated with some train tracks (with a toss up as to whether they're even active), but still carry the nonsensical presumption that every passing vehicle should somehow have to yield to nonexistent trains going at unknown speeds.

The specific busyness of these tracks is all the more reason all crossings should be lighted/gated. And while we're at it, there should be sensors/cameras to check for stuck vehicles and communicate that to the train a few miles away - if a train going at 90mph takes 3 miles to stop, that actually means the gates only need to come down two minutes before the train gets to the crossing. But there's no impetus to proactively address such problems until the incentives are reformed.

> I believe it is this circumstance which places the onus on MODOT to defend the users of their later-arriving road from hazards associated with rail traffic on the preexisting BNSF line

Sure, but understanding the legal justification doesn't change what I said. This is an instance where the common law first-come first-serve system completely fails. See also: water "rights". It would be a different story if the tracks were also a public way and open for use by everyone, but in general private control over the commons should be rejected.

Your solution proposal appears to be:

If BNSF is not already today 100% responsible for installing & maintaining maximal protection equipment at all RR/road crossings that were installed by government over its preexisting tracks,

then BNSF should have all of its property (tracks and right of way (RR track bearing real estate)) converted into "the commons" (i.e. BNSF should be nationalized)

and the owner of "the commons" (government) will then resolve all RR/road crossing safety issues (by RR closure, road closure, or deployment of crossing improvements sufficient to match safety levels attained in the country having the safest RR/road crossings in the world, at its prerogative) all while operating the new national RR (carrying freight and passengers) safely and efficiently to ensure supply line problems attributable to RR causes do not worsen.

Is this accurate?

> then BNSF should have all of its property (tracks and right of way (RR track bearing real estate)) converted into "the commons" (i.e. BNSF should be nationalized)

No, I said nothing of the sort. Many times, homeowners own the land up until the middle of the road in front of their house. But they don't have the right of way when pulling into the road, and must interact with other users of the public way in an equitable manner orthogonal to ownership. I'm advocating something similar for owners of railroad tracks, whereby trains don't automatically get the right of way, but rather track owners are responsible for doing improvements to mediate contention if they want trains to travel through intersections at speed. The default state of an uncontrolled level crossing should result in lack of speed rather than lack of safety.

I used to work for BNSF, I'm well aware of how those programs materialize on the private end. Sometimes states will chip in, but it's mostly on the line owner. You can't just install a crossing anymore. They're wired into national and global networks that are part of track-side overhauls. Additionally, when AMTRAK goes over BNSF lines (at least when I worked there) you don't have automated train control (which is really braking). A signal is a good first step, but if your goal is to really put a dent in these kinds of incidents then it's a lot of on-going cost - mostly born by the tail operator because they're the ones that lease access to the lines.

The situation is quite confusing. Restricting the discussion to the vast numbers of existing RR/road crossings (not new crossings), then to what degree does the state control the installation of automated crossing protection (upgrades)? The various articles I read about this crash strongly suggest that MODOT is largely throttling which RR/road crossing automated protection upgrades are executed, and implies this throttling is largely because of state spending limits. But if as you say most of the cost of these upgrades is to be borne by BNSF, why would MODOT be reluctant to compel BNSF to spend money upgrading crossing protection throughout their state? If BNSF had refused such "suggestions" by the state, I would expect to made aware, post crash, of how evil BNSF was in not performing needed safety upgrades requested/commanded by the state, how the state is suing BNSF to compel them to do so, and how BNSF is 100% liable for the damages related to this crash. But that isn't what I read in any of the articles related to this crash. This strongly suggests to me that the state bears significant, perhaps gating, responsibility here.

Any clarification of what's going on in this regard would be appreciated.

That could be specific to the state. As I said, federal and state rail commissions can exercise authority in that space, and have varying agreements state by state. The point of what I was saying is that getting a signal in place is one thing, actually having it connected up to BNSF's CTC network and integrating that into passenger trains is the more effective thing to do, and $400k sounds very short for that.

You're looking to assign blame, I'm looking to say, "How does this problem get resolved". Very different questions.

You must not drive out in the country often. Railroad crossing with lights are not common outside busy roads. The most you'll have is a railroad crossing sign. Certainly a flashing light system is safer, but you (and that news article) make it sound like it's absence is unusual.

The absence of traffic control devices isn't unusual, but it's most certainly condemnable.

Being in a denser area where crossings generally have a light and a gate, it really irks me when I see a no-visibility at-grade crossing with just an intended-to-be-ignored "yield" sign for the road. It's nothing more than a pathetic fiction to legally cover the railroads ass after the fact, and the setup should be outright illegal.

I've experienced different expectations in less dense areas with generally clear landscapes, say where a single main road runs parallel to the tracks and all the branches on one side cross the tracks. But overall US railroad standards are stuck in the 19th century and we shouldn't just accept that state of affairs.

This is the real story behind the story - a giant corporation creating a dangerous situation for the sake of profit, a government which does not protect people but corporate profits, and a small town that sits by and allows this to happen, but will pitch in and carry off the bodies when tragedy inevitably strikes. One person in the town did try to prevent this, but one person is not enough in the face of everyone else. "The national tapestry that is The Great American Small Town" indeed.

(Disclaimer: This is just personal knowledge from a casual observer and occasional passenger. I traveled cross-country by Amtrak a few times and loved it, and wanted to learn a bit about its history.)

Amtrak isn't quite the giant evil corporation in the sense that Amazon is. If anything, it's more of a dying relic propped up by sheer nostalgia. Congress keeps it on life support with small, occasional injections of funds. Its infrastructure and equipment aren't just obsolete, but dying, neglected by a nation who's almost entirely switched to automobiles and planes. Amtrak is a lifeline into the heartland, where many small towns have no other transit options.

But Amtrak is largely unprofitable outside of the Northeast Corridor, which runs up and down the East Coast and has fancy commuter trains for the rich businesspeople and politicians. The rest of its network runs on decades-old equipment and trains and barely keeps up with operating expenditures. It shares rail lines with freight trains, but is subordinate to them, so passengers have to wait any time a freight train wants the track.

It's stuck in a catch-22.

As a business, it can't turn a profit because, at current ticket prices, it is often slower and more expensive than flights -- not even considering the money lost due to time off of work. For shorter hauls, intercity buses are often quicker, cheaper, and have more time slots. It's not really a practical way to travel for most people in our economy except as a form of recreation, almost like a land cruise, or for small towns with no other options, or certain religious sects that don't drive (Mennonites). So it's not just a very profitable business thing to begin with.

So why don't we just nationalize it and run it as a national utility? We can't; it was specifically founded in the 70s to NOT be a government-run service. Nonetheless, in the decades since, it stays alive only because of government injections... yet it can't be directly run by the government.

So it's a private business that can't survive on its own, doesn't have enough capital to do anything differently, and can't go out of business because Congress keeps propping it up. It's literally just stuck on life support. The wiki on it is pretty interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak#Public_funding

Covid hit them pretty hard too and caused a lot of shutdowns. They have to negotiate with something like 20 different unions to keep operating, when they've already been unprofitable for decades. Biden gave them more money, but I think that just keeps the death spiral going for a bit longer rather than actually fixing anything.

Personally, I think the age of passenger rail is sadly behind us. A part of me wishes they could resurrect under a different model, maybe more like a fancy land-based cruise ship, with fun amenities on board, more sleeper cabins, things for young people (clubs, pubs, games, maybe even traveling concerts), whatever -- e.g. make the train its own destination. But that requires both the will to transform their service and the capital to do so, and they have neither. And so, for the foreseeable future, Congress keeps paying, and the train keeps a rollin'...

You're right about all of this of course but I assumed the parent was complaining about BNSF who is responsible for these lines and not Amtrak. I'd guess the majority of trains going through these at-grade unprotected crossings are freight, and it's sort of a freak accident that Amtrak happened to find a truck in the way rather than a freighter

Ah, if that is the case, I apologize for my completely irrelevant tangent, lol. I don't know anything about BNSF and won't comment there. Sorry about that.

I think it's a "yes, and" -- that is, amtrak is more or less hobbled by the state of the long-haul routes and congressional funding, AND they're limited by the whims of profit-seeking rail corporations under-investing in line infrastructure :)

The train was there first. Why is always the default assumption that cars can go wherever they want and everyone else should pay for it?

On the contrary, OP correctly identified that lacking even basic safety systems is a pervasive issue and not a one-off oversight in the case of this small town:

>> In that respect it's also a story about the poor state of American infrastructure.

I can find you a dozen such crossings within an hour of my house. If you care to head into the properly rural part of any state, you'll find they're everywhere. There ought to be flashing lights and arms at every one, but no one wants to foot that bill.

Was the truck actively crossing the tracks when it got hit or was it disabled? I haven't found any explanation of why it was there.

It seems to have been at least trying to cross, as it had been crossing for the past couple of days delivering rock to a levee project [1]. If you look at the crossing on Google maps [2] it's clear that the crossing is not at right angles. If the dump truck had been northbound at the crossing (and I don't know if it was), the driver would have had to turn his head more than 90 degrees to the left to see the train (which was coming from the west).

Local residents had apparently been warning of the danger of this particular crossing for some time [1]. A mockup of the accident scene is at [0].

The lawsuits have begun [3]. One of the suits alleges that the trucking company failed to properly maintain its equipment, which suggests to me the possibility that the truck stalled on the tracks.

[0] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263060...

[1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article262969...

[2] https://goo.gl/maps/n7WNSFMiqYgbEQQp9

[3] https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article263084...

I don't care about such crossings, it's trivially easy to check for a train. I live in a rural area with many of these crossings and (to my knowledge) there haven't been any problems.

I don't think this is an infrastructure failing as much as it is a "Why would we need that?"

In a similar spirit of small towns rising to the occasion, I’ll take this opportunity to recommend the musical Come From Away (Apple TV), about the planes grounded in Gander, Newfoundland on 9/11. A wonderfully told story.

Might be on Netflix in other countries, but it’s on AppleTV+ in the US.

(Also, if the live production is touring near you- go see it. I saw it live a few years ago and it was awesome!)

Thanks, fixed — I misremembered the platform I watched it on.

Americans are especially good when it comes to large efforts over the course of a short space of time to solve a major problem.

Americans are also especially bad at tackling problems that require a small, consistent, amount of help over a long period of time.

I’m honestly not sure why this is.

The former feels like you’re doing something to immediate effect. The latter is invisible, both the solution and the problem, until it’s too late.

I don’t think it’s a uniquely American trait.

On a larger scale, the US Marshall Plan to help Europe back on its feet after WW2 was immensely important for Europe and for individuals. My uncle got help funding a successful garment factory in Bergen, Norway. He could employ over a hundred women, many widows. Those who still remember are forever grateful to the US. The same uncle also told me about how the Flesland airport outside Bergen was constructed. For years there had been bikesheeding about building an airport outside Bergen. After the war, it was finally constructed when NATO needed an airport. The US army came in with large bulldozers, shaved off the hilltops and put it into the valleys between the hills and in short time a large airstrip was made.

Thank you for writing this. Reading it in the USA on our Independence Day reminds me how wonderful my country can be.

That's people.

Yeah exactly, big efforts where you see short-term results are instantly gratifying - you see things change almost immediately.

Small gradual changes are hard to see, many people might overlook them entirely, and the reward is stretched thin or very far off. You might not even see the full outcome in your lifetime.

It’s easy to see why people favor short term results.

This old proverb comes to mind: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”

We’ve still got a long way to go.

There's no real basis for this. America is at the forefront of any number of long running projects. Cancer research, self driving cars, and all things space are three things that immediately jump to mind.

Just as a counterpoint to this, here's a murder in small town Missouri, not too far from Mendon: https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox2now.com/news/true-crime/mis...

Nobody said anything about it in 40 years. There's a lot more nuance to small town people pulling together than the train wreck shows.

I grew up outside of Kirksville MO. I've even taken the Southwest Chief from La Plata one or two stops NE of Mendon, to Newton KS. Idealizing small town or rural life is a mistake. The issue is more complicated than "rural Americans pull together, urban Americans do not".

This is the same problem with authoritarianism.

Communities aligned to a single goal can do amazing things, the downside is just that sometimes that single goal is “protect a murderer that we all like” or “commit genocide”.

I do not enjoy that every good hearted story needs to have a top comment with a clickbait counterpoint.

Given that I grew up near there, and remembered the Skidmore murder story, what would you have me do? Not add material to the discussion? Arm I supposed to just stay silent about some things? If so, how should I know whether or not to stay silent. Give me a method, and I'll use it next time.

How would "sometimes bad things happen" be relevant in the least? Missouri is a large state and the two communities aren't close. Besides, you should read the link you posted rather than relying on memory. That story is of a small community defending itself from the predations of a sociopath whom law enforcement could not control. Maybe it's a critique of law enforcement, but it isn't a "counterpoint" to "small town people help out in emergency".

How is "sometimes good things happen" relevant in the least? I can flip it that way too.

The "Mendon, Missouri" story had as its theme that small town/rural America pulls together. There's nuance to that, and it's a mistake to ignore the nuance. The Skidmore story illustrates that, and it took place in the same rural NW Missouri millieu.

Are you calling the train wreck a "good thing that happened"? I don't think even Dietrich would go that far... We can probably agree that neither this author nor his audience care much for "nuance", which presumably in this context means that each community in some sense "pulled together"? In one case they pulled together for several hours, in the other case it was forty years. In both cases they pulled together for a good cause, so I don't see a "counterpoint"?

Just ignore the haters. As a fellow Missourian, I appreciated the additional context.

Your comment was relevant and on-topic.

> This content is not available in your country/region.

Seriously.

What kind of century are those people from?

The century of adtech, which the US doesn't bother to regulate.

Having lived in both areas, cities make people crazy. Everyone spends so much time trying to stand out. Look at my fashionable clothing. Look at my exotic sexual identity. Nobody is comfortable in their own skin. There are no consequences to bad behavior because people are disposable and reputation is unimportant when there are 10million other suckers that don’t know you’re a dirtbag.

I don’t think we’ve evolved to live among millions of people.

Hey,me too! I grew up near Mendon, spent the last 35 years in city of Denver! I'm qualified too!

I say the opposite: most urban dwellers just take it easy. You don't have to conform to whatever ideals your small town holds. There are freaks, but they don't demand your participation in their freakery. Live and let live! Living in a small town is suffocating if you're at all different.

Having lived in both areas, small towns make people crazy. Everyone spends so much time trying to fit in. Look at how I go to Church with the community every weekend. Look at how I partake in gossip and publicly shaming freaks. There are severe consequences to even harmless behavior that's abnormal because people don't have enough going on in their lives when there aren't more than 10 other suckers that are smart enough to move out of a toxic area.

I don't think we've evolved to live in small groups.

Wow, strange to read of other folks from the Kirksville vicinity. I didn’t grow up there but spent my first seven years of adulthood nearby, and rode the Southwest Chief that’s being discussed in the article dozens of times.

Rural folks have lots of positive things going on. But they’re also mostly shrinking towns, and I’ve had teenagers try to run me (on my bike, they in cars) off the road for fun on a Saturday night.

I wouldn’t want to be a teenager in rural America. But there are some nice things about being a kid and an adult.

One way to see rural MO is on the Katy bike trail:

https://mostateparks.com/park/katy-trail-state-park

It's a 240 mile protected bike path.

Awesome thanks!

Love HN for gems like this.

And if you like that you’ll also like the Mickelson Trail in South Dakota: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Mickelson_Trail

And ironically one of the most popular ways to “do” the Katy trail is to take the Amtrak to Kansas City since that train has bike stowage, and riding the trail from west to east is (generally) all downhill.

Is it relatively easy to get back to Chicago from the eastern terminus of the bike trail?

Rode the entire trail in 3 days in 2016! Quite the challenge for myself at the time and living out of your bike was a blast. Got to talk and meet many locals and go into many small towns to resupply food and enjoy the ride. My total milage ended up being 270 miles.

Looks like Kansas City news picked it up.

KSHB - https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/mendon-missouri-communi...

KCUR - https://www.kcur.org/news/2022-06-28/amtrak-derailment-mendo...

It may not have made national news, but here (I only live a couple hours from Mendon) some of this made its way into local awareness. It was mostly focused on the efforts of the boy scouts in the area, though.

The Scouts who responded to this incident were passengers on the train that derailed. They were returning from Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. It is traditional for Scouts to take the trip to and from Philmont on a train.

There is an excellent book on this theme, which I have been recommending liberally for several years: "A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster".

https://www.amazon.com/Paradise-Built-Hell-Extraordinary-Com...

That was the first thing on my mind, also. I found that book during a really difficult time in my life and it really helped me find an optimist hopeful perspective when everything seemed hopeless- it inspired me deeply.

Reminds me of the American TV show "What Would You Do?", of which there are many videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatWouldYouDo

It tends heavily to revisit certain themes, but overall it drives home the point that regardless of the social acrimony and political polarization that dominate social media and seem to divide Americans into inexorably inimical tribes, when it comes to everyday interactions, most Americans seem to be pretty decent and kind people.

There is a book about how people come together during times of disaster, called A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. One of the distinct things I got from it is how the media often focuses on the gruesome details rather than how people more often than not help one another out. It is an eye-opening read that gave me a lot of hope and inspiration.

From the Publisher:

"The most startling thing about disasters, according to award-winning author Rebecca Solnit, is not merely that so many people rise to the occasion, but that they do so with joy. That joy reveals an ordinarily unmet yearning for community, purposefulness, and meaningful work that disaster often provides. A Paradise Built in Hell is an investigation of the moments of altruism, resourcefulness, and generosity that arise amid disaster’s grief and disruption and considers their implications for everyday life. It points to a new vision of what society could become-one that is less authoritarian and fearful, more collaborative and local."

<https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/301070/a-paradise-b...>

There's a related phenomenon called "elite panic", where the media focuses/outright manufactures fear about poor people looting, rioting etc whenever there's a natural disaster, and this leads to idiocy like police standing around guarding undamaged rich people's houses instead of even trying to save the actual victims:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_panic

Great to hear these people helping out. I didn't like when people started using the phrase "First responder" for police, fire, ambulance people. If you are at the scene of a problem, you can be a first responder and be there sooner than the "first responders". You can be a zeroth responder.

> You can be a zeroth responder.

You can be. But you can also cause more harm than good as the zeroth responder (removing an impaled object, moving someone with a back injury).

Fortunately, there are affordable high-quality first responder courses. In the extreme, becoming a certified EMT takes only 100-200 hours of instruction, and there are many training options that are much shorter and cam be completed over a weekend.

Typing in Mendon, Missouri in Apple Maps has the most small town feel a town could have once iOS zooms in on all four buildings

>"This is a crisis for our democracy and our society," said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Medill and primary author of the report, in a statement.

Why is everything a crisis now? The crying of wolf gets tiresome and it makes it easy to tune out, probably to the detriment of local newspapers.

Oops, replied to the wrong article.

I didn't see this quote in the article--what are you referring to?

Oops I must have replied in the wrong article. It was in reference to this:

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/04/local-newspapers-news-deser...

Anywhere in the world if you fall off your bike someone will help you up.

As someone who fell off their bike rather hard in my case it was a 9 year old boy that found me and he really made my day in how he responded and organized help.

Tangent but I have observed in the US that often the red lights at the train crossing start very late and give less than a minute for a vehicle to stop.

Great story.

The day of the train wreck will live on in Mendon for generations, I'm sure. There will be kids and grand-kids telling this story in 50 years.

God Bless America.

Stories like this are extremely motivating to me after seeing non-stop streams of pure social negativity or bad events unfolding in the news.

Unrelated, but it did make me think of 9/11 and “The Man in the Red Bandana”:

https://youtu.be/S77KYbkmjwc

The opening question sets the stage for the context:

“What would you do, in the last hour of your life?”

I love humans even with all of our negatives. Everyone has the potential to “rise to the occasion” in their own way big or small.

Happy 4th of July to my US HN friends!

"This was not a small truck. This was a vehicle about the size of a Sonic Drive-In."

Has the author ever been to a Sonic Drive-In or was there a Liebherr T 282B in Mendon Missouri?

Maybe it's the size of the Sonic in Mendon

By mass maybe?

Is the author's claim that modern journalism doesn't contain enough feel-good human interest stories?

No. The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty, exhibited by the townsfolk was ignored by the press.

It was probably a bit "whiny," but it was not incorrect.

I do feel that publicizing examples of generosity of spirit would help in healing our nation, but he's right, in that it doesn't sell papers.

> No. The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty, exhibited by the townsfolk was ignored by the press.

Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man isn't. Sorry to be cold and unaffectionate (I love the story though) but I believe it happens regulary. Big town, small town, there's good people everywhere.

Terrible people everywhere too. I like hearing about the good folks. It invigorates my soul. Hope is important!

I'm pretty sure there is a market for a social network that would tweak their algorithm to present positive content rather than the usual junk, though.

It's not like FB or twitter doesn't have the resource and skill to A/B test that - but I'm pretty sure their biased by the 19th century tradition of "sex sells, and we only have one frontpage".

Every time I saw a website present itself as "good news only" it was almost always religious in nature. Not sure if there's a market.

> Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man isn't.

I become increasingly convinced that a significant part of our deficiency in reporting is that we've conflated "news" with "current affairs" long enough that we've forgotten that both are actually worthy of mental bandwidth.

> The author indicated that the exceptional (and it was, indeed, "exceptional") generosity and sense of Duty

The author took pains to assert that it wasn't exceptional:

>> And the most unusual thing about all this is: None of this is unusual

>> believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill

> was ignored by the press

Well, they're right in that I didn't hear anything about this specific train derailment, but heart-warming human interest stories are a pretty regular staple of even the national press.

> I do feel that publicizing examples of generosity of spirit would help in healing our nation

I'm not so sure. Our nation isn't breaking apart because we can't pull together in a crisis, it's breaking apart because we can't stand together outside of a crisis. Americans want very different things, and pulling together in a crisis only helps when we're in crisis mode.

> Americans want very different things, and pulling together in a crisis only helps when we're in crisis mode

The world _is_ in crisis mode.

Unfortunately, some people have a vested interest in looking at the train crash, and not helping, and maybe even preventing people from helping.

(I can't help but picture the "train-crash denier" next to the boy scout, explaning that the train did not crash, it's all a scam from you-know-who to restrict your liberties or serve the car industry, wake up sheeple, etc...)

I mean, this is a crisis. There's a constitutional crisis in terms of two extremely divergent views of how to understand the constitution that both carry significant trajectory changes and neither of which sound very helpful. There's a political crisis going on with neo-nazi influence in and around the Republican party that's not being dealt with at all. There's a digital war on-going that's been heating up for the past two-ish decades that promises to get worse. There's a literal housing crisis. There's more, but that's a short list I think most people can agree on.

> ... extremely divergent views of how to understand the constitution...

IMO, there's good in this situation, because inferring a nebulous right to privacy that didn't do very much was always a little questionable thing for the supreme court to do. It was a "good enough" measure that prevented us from doing any better.

Yes, it's terrible that poor women in red states will have to pay the price.

But ultimately, we're going to have to figure out how to define a right to privacy and make it into real law. And we can maybe fix other things, like security/privacy in our papers and effects and not rely upon 19th century judicial compromises on policing power and searches, too.

> There's a political crisis going on with neo-nazi influence in and around the Republican party that's not being dealt with at all

Honestly, the Republican party is <<slowly>> making itself less relevant. Which is kind of bad-- a relevant and not-crazy political opposition is a useful thing to a society.

Is this a question you are asking in good faith, because I think it is clear that he is not making that claim?

> I think it is clear that he is not making that claim?

This is the second last line of the piece, where the author explicitly makes that claim:

>> Although we rarely hear about such acts of compassion and lovingkindness within our society, believe me, they happen. Every day. Every hour. Ordinary Americans will astound you with their goodwill. Sadly, ordinary American journalists aren’t interested in being astounded by such things.

Maybe that's not what they're trying to get across—if not, I'd like to hear what you think it is—but I like how you jump to "acting in bad faith".

I think your question was rhetorical in casting journalism that focuses on American goodwill as "human interest" was designed to engender an angry response; that it was a trollish question where you already had an answer that was baiting; that you were not at all asking that question; that you were expressing an opinion.

I think your responses affirm my read.

> casting journalism that focuses on American goodwill as "human interest" was designed to engender an angry response

Much like a passenger train barreling full speed into a dump truck, you made one severe mistake at the beginning and rode it head first into a spectacular disaster.

I'd actually argue that it's just not astounding, so it doesn't make headlines.

Yes. It's a bit of a thing with him.

Well then—I guess that's better than I was expecting, given how often "ordinary Americans" is a dogwhistle. I don't agree that journalism needs more feels good stories... but they could do worse.

He writes very effectively in the voice of a 1980s regional newspaper columnist; you'd have gotten the same take on "if it bleeds it leads" news culture from one of them.

This reminds me of a town I ended up in when I got separated from the truck transporting me and actually had to do community service to fix up the roads.

Is a good story, but I am not sure what use it has for YChackernews....?

Also want to second @mcphage

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