Edhat StaffUpdate by the edhat staff
March 5, 2023
A woman was struck by a passing Amtrak train while riding a bicycle next to the train tracks in Santa Barbara on Friday night.
Emergency officials confirmed a female was struck around 6:15 p.m. near the 300 – 400 blocks of Ninos Drive, near the Dwight Murphy baseball and soccer fields. The driver of the Amtrak train reportedly applied emergency brakes and sounded the horn to alert the bicyclist prior to the collision .
The female victim sustained a moderate injury to her upper extremity and was transported to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
The victim’s identity and medical condition are not known.
Amtrak vs. Pedestrian Near Dwight Murphy Field
By Bob on the Scanner
6:18 p.m., March 4, 2023
Heard the Amtrak Train struck a pedestrian, possibly a bicyclist, near Dwighy Murphy Field and the Zoo on the eastside.
This is Train 777.
Amtrak called this a “Trespasser Incident.” Unclear if there were any injuries but train has since moved on.
Both City Fire and AMR were there along with ATK staying for almost an hour so quite likely an injury.
Has something changed–for the better–with regards to safety along the railroad tracks? Not so long ago, maybe less than a year, pedestrian-train incidents (usually fatal) were reported here at edhat regularly. Are these accidents just not happening or are they no longer being reported? Would like to think the former!
Safety starts in the mind of the person headed out towards the railroad tracks. If the mind is not right, then the odds of natural selection increase. Drugs, alcohol, a state of obliviousness induced by nullifying sense of sound with earbuds etc have hopefully dropped, but my guess is that the series of accidents we saw earlier was just like flipping a coin… it will eventually do 5-6 in row. Its a bit like cancer clusters where they never find a cause other than the cancer gene pool matured negatively at same general place at the same general point in time. (I am using “same point in time” broadly. 1 year out of 2000 is statistically insignificant)
What a dumb place to ride a bike.