Imagine the outcry, if he had hit a car and lost control and been killed by another car, or maybe even of perfidious trucks and buses, hunting him down ruthlessly. So while I usually take a more strident tone when advocating for safety improvements (and active "chimp proofing" of rail crossings), this would just as likely happen where there was no barrier, and if it turns out to be DUI related, would just have happened somewhere else, not involving the train.

As someone who worked on the safety upgrades that were installed after we'd killed our hundreth "so-called" evil train grade crossing "victim" in the late 90's, I find it quite reasonable to check in the post mortem for alcohol or drugs in this Blue line fatatlity.

As the average BA for the first 100 deaths in the 90's on the Blue Line came back at around .23, and hand full in that "average" weren't drunk at all, the likelihood for a DUI encounter with a train turns out to be quite high (as Brightline has learned in Florida).

When the Alameda Corridor was opened, and all traffic signals were turned to solid reds, it turned out that those driving drunk, through grade crossings were more likely to stop for a full red light (in conjucntion with better signal integration and improved quad crossing upgrades), as opposed to a flashing red... Which is why we saw a big drop in fatalities since then.

All of these "lessons" learned help, and have been applied to things like the Gold line extensions, but they don't fix "stupid", like DUI...

And the next time you hear the bike Nazi's whining about the "killer car" or ped "activist's whining, remember that 40% of bike fatalities were DUI, and up to 47% of all ped fatalities were legually "under the influence" when they unwisely ran a traffic light, or stepped off of the curb in front of those "killer cars"....