Life is Funny

How many times have you sat at a railroad crossing, and wondered how much longer it would be before the train passes?

I usually want to shut my vehicle off, but I’m always worried that as soon as I do it, the last few train cars will go by…

If the train could signal a countdown timer that everyone could see, and it started counting down: 8min 32 secs.. I think a lot of people would shut off their vehicles once they realized how long the train would actually take..

I’m thinking of Global Warming here, and having 20 cars on each side of the tracks.. that’s a total of 40 vehicles sitting there idling and polluting our atmosphere.

A little thing like a countdown timer might actually give peace of mind to people that don’t want to get caught with their vehicle engine off and the train crossing re-opening. Soon as the timer got down to the last 45 seconds, people could start their engines again and feel comfortable doing so..

If you mathematically figure this out, with real data, it could mean a large savings.

40 cars at major crossings x 8 minutes of unnecessary idling x number of railroad crossings in North America that do not have a countdown timer = a lot of unnecessary pollution.

It’s just an idea — what do you think?