Passengers on a derailed Amtrak train in North Carolina thanked God that there were no fatalities in the accident.
The train collided into a tractor trailer hauling an extra large load on Monday, and injured 55 people on board.
The truck was attempting to make a left turn across CSX train tracks at the intersection of highways US 301 and NC 903 in Halifax County but was unable to fit.
A driver behind the truck, Amber Keeter, said that the truck driver and its police escort spent several minutes preparing and attempting to cross the tracks, but ran out of time.
"The railroad lights started blinking, and so the tractor-trailer driver tried to gun it forward," Keeter reported. The truck driver jumped out of the vehicle "just a couple of seconds before" the train struck, she added.
The tractor and trailer were 164 feet long, with a combined weight of 255,000 pounds, according to its state permit.
Loads of that size require truck drivers and Highway Patrol escorts to "clear their routes and inform the railroad dispatchers what they're doing," former Federal Railroad Administration official and Michigan State University railway management professor Steve Ditmeyer confirmed.
"That dispatcher would have immediately put up a red signal for Amtrak and radioed Amtrak to stop," he added.
North Carolina Highway Patrol Spokesman Lt. Jeff Gordon said that notifying railroad dispatch was not the responsibility of the trooper, and early indications suggest that neither CSX nor Amtrak were notified of the problem at the intersection.
"That's all going to be part of the investigation," CSX spokeswoman Kristin Seay affirmed.
There were 212 passengers on board the train, and most of the injured were released by Tuesday. The survivors noted that the accident could have been far worse.
"We're just thankful that we're still alive," passenger Lisa Carson said. "It could have been really worse. God was really with us."
