Bridge death burden will never lift for train driver

The tragedy on the Ngaruawahia railway bridge last Sunday hit more than the family of the 11-year-old girl run over by the train. The driver of that train will be scarred for life too, though there was probably nothing he could do. Another driver who has suffered a similar tragedy on the same bridge gives us a moving account today of what can happen.

The child on the bridge in his case was a 9-year-old boy. He was nearly 100m away when the train driver saw him and slammed on the brakes. But the train had been travelling its permitted 60km/h. The boy started to run but the slowing train was gaining on him. The driver willed the boy to jump off the bridge but he did not. He ran, he tripped.

The anguish of the driver at that moment can not be imagined. When the train came to a halt 100m further on, he could only hope by some miracle the boy had survived. But it was not a movie. In real life children who walk on railway tracks may be killed.

That driver’s trains have hit three people in his time. The first, in 1980, was the hardest, he said. “It’s different now, you get support.” But the memory never fades.

It will be the same for car and truck drivers involved in a fatal collision through no fault of their own.

Their pain does not stand comparison with the family of the person killed but anguish of the innocent party should not be forgotten. The accident is cruel to them too.