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GM’s luxury brand just can’t buy a break. Maybe I should rephrase that… [hat tip to Nick for the link]
21 Comments on “Cadillac Comes a Cropper In Kent...”
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Looks a bit tougher than the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s side impact crash test!
Contrary to posts in the original story, a person on foot may not hear a diesel loco coming. Under certain conditions it is silent. No excuse for the truck driver. Wanna buy a salvaged new Caddy cheap?
Good buy.
GM’s luxury brand just can’t buy a break in Britain.
The collision occurred in Kent Washington, not Britain. Great pictures!
Error..
The locomotive in the photograph is a Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, a GE C44-9W diesel locomotive. It would not be able to run on UK tracks which are of a different gauge. And BNSF do no have a presence in the UK.
The scene of this accident is 228th Street, Kent, Washington State, USA. Kent is a town just south of Tacoma.
You have to admit, it looks very elegant in mid-destructive-flight.
@theswedishtiger
railroads in the UK and US both use standard gauge- 4’8.5″
While the track gauge in the US and the UK is the same standard gauge (4’8.5″) the loading gauge is very different. The loading gauge is the space that a rail vehicle is allowed to occupy (height & width) so it doesn’t collide with station platforms, other trains in turns, tunnel roofs, and so on. Just have a look at any British train and you’ll see the wheels line up much more closely with the sides of the vehicles, unlike in Europe and North America where there is much more side overhang over the wheels. A good example is the Eurostar, built to the British loading gauge, and the French TGV, built to the European loading gauge.
This could possibly be the new business model that GM has been flailing for … build cars that no one will ever buy, but get them destroyed in untold freak accidents to claim the insurance $$$ (or is it £££)…
Who took this photo, the truck driver? :-C
Does the engineer sit on the opposite side of British trains, which side are the throttle and brake on ?.
Is that Caddy in “flight” or just impaled on that freight train?
Yet another pictorial metaphor for GM.
For any of you driving to the scene of this metaphor for GM’s troubles, Kent, WA is north east of Tacoma, WA USA. Or south of Seattle.
I know many of you have been driving your car out of gas in search of this, so I felt it was time to help out. I don’t ask for directions either when I’m lost
That’s actually a pretty good advertisement for the good old Cadillac DTS. If you look at how little penetration there is on the driver’s side door into the passenger compartment, that car protected the occupant pretty well. And that model has side-curtain airbags standard.
Kent, WA is actualy between Renton and Auburn, three pearls strung from the south shore of Lake Washington, placing it south of Seattle, north of Tacoma.
Further, notice the street it happened on: S 228th. This is the street leading from the rail yards where the cars are unloaded. A tractor trailer rig hauling 7 new vehicles was hit.
Freight rail goes through there fairly slow but Amtrack is in the range of 60-70mph. If it had been one of them, the cars would have landed in Canada.
I said South of Tacoma last night, didn’t I. Too much wine, I live in Yakima and should know better.
Land in Canada indeed – someone was killed in Quebec City last week when a train hit their pickup truck. There was so little left they actually didn’t know it was a truck for a while, and they spent a day looking to make sure that there wasn’t anyone else other than the driver who might have been tossed from the wreck – that’s how violent the impact was.
These photos were provided by Mynorthwest.com user Stan Kamienski who wrote “Walked out of the office and a train went by trying to stop with a Cadillac on the front of it.”
That’s funny.
Usta Bee :
January 31st, 2009 at 7:47 am
Does the engineer sit on the opposite side of British trains, which side are the throttle and brake on ?.
In the USA, the engineer sits and controls the locomotive on the right side. The fireman, if there are still any around (and unnecessary in a modern diesel-electric locomotive), sits on the left. In the UK, I’m not so sure.
In the UK trains ‘drive’ on the left, like cars. The driver, however, sits in the left of the cab. This is mainly so he can conveniently enter and exit the locomotive on the safe station platform or lineside verge side of the train, rather than the dangerous opposing line side.
I can see what the old man driving that Caddy would be saying. “Ethel, I think we made a wrong turn!”
Can we have the high res version of this pic?!?! This picture has me on the floor laughing… It should win an award.