Not all cities in the world feature light rail transit systems, but those who do have probably hosted their fair share of traffic-related incidents throughout the years.
Most drivers know the score. If you do have no other choice but to wait your turn in traffic on actual tram tracks, you better do so only when the coast is clear. Otherwise, you’ll not only be impeding the tram’s progress (not cool), but also putting your car at risk, since you never know when you’ll come across a conductor who might not be paying attention – and things will turn out pretty bad for you.
Yours truly hails from a city with no fewer than 785 tram stations, spread over 143 km (89 miles), and so has seen first hand a whole bunch of accidents that involved both careless drivers as well as careless tram conductors.
Ideally, the two means of transportation should never have to cross paths, but overhauling entire systems worldwide, systems that have been in place since the 1800s, is an extremely costly and difficult task.
So, the best you can hope for is that as long as you obey traffic regulations, you won’t have to scrape your car off the pavement after a 20 tonne tram has had its way with it. Tram controllers, while usually bothered by any car standing in their way during rush hour traffic, generally tend to understand – yet, mistakes do happen.
As for this particular accident, it occurred last week in Kazan, Russia, and according to Flow-of-News, at fault was the conductor of the tram who was clearly going too fast.
Unfortunately, apart from the cars damaged, a 28-year old woman and a four-year old child were injured in this accident. Hope it’s nothing serious and they recover soon…