Just some more info after I actually looked it up:People also like to wear headphones/ear buds and can't hear trains coming.
Stupidity will never end.
Like I said above, I've heard they can be surprisingly quiet sometimes but still didn't really understand how.
But I see there's a lot of info about it online. Partly, it's because most of the noise goes to the sides, so they can be quiet when you're directly in front of them, until it's too late. A crazy example of that is this selfie where the light in the background is a train and they couldn't hear it coming. All three girls died.
That's from this article and video about how trains can be surprisingly hard to hear:
You really can't hear trains until they're almost right on top of you
And I say that as someone who spent much of my youth taking short cuts along train tracks (although usually to the side), and I remember when we were quite young, a bunch of friends would hang out beside the tracks and flatten coins, until a friend's dad caught us one day and totally flipped out. I thought he was just being a dick at the time.
Last edited: