Two people died and two were injured on March 15th, 2015 in Louisville, Kentucky when a Toyota Camry tried to beat the train at the last possible second. There was no hope of the Camry making it, no way the locomotive engineer would have seen the car in time to do anything, and to compound an already tragic scene, a group of railroad enthusiasts were filming the entire thing. The train caught the Camry in a perfect T-bone on the passenger-side of the car and shoved the Toyota over a half-mile down the tracks before it was able to be stopped. It’s not uncommon: preliminary statistics from 2014 show 2,280 accidents, resulting in 267 deaths. Operation Lifesaver, a nationwide program that seeks to inform the public about rail safety and dangers, has been around since the early 1970s. And it’s not like it’s hard to ignore a train that’s moving. So how did this accident happen?

Easy: stupidity and overconfidence. The driver of the car ignored every flashing light and warning, every law in place for railroad crossings, and wound up being struck by a 100-car freight train that was hauling 400,000 tons of cargo at speed. As a result, an 18-year old and a 17-year old are in the hospital with major injuries, and a 19-year-old and a 16-year-old are dead. Train spotters who bore witness to the accident are reeling from seeing the accident in person, and will be haunted by that sight for many years to come. It’s senseless and stupid, and it didn’t have to happen.

To drive my point home, this is crash footage from KiwiRail of New Zealand. There’s plenty of car vs. train videos on YouTube, but this is a staged crash, so you aren’t seeing a real-life scenario play out, and it’s a train at speed, not just putting along pushing a car down a track. The train punts the hatchback off of the tracks like it’s nothing. Until driving laws are upgraded to weed out those who do not take driving seriously, it’s up to each individual driver to have the common sense and awareness to not find themselves in this position.