Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad v. Triplett

Citations

• 38 Ill. 482

Syllabus

<p>1. Negligence—what constitutes. Where a railway train is made up of platform cars, which are being driven before the locomotive towards the crossing of a highway, the approach being through a cut, so that persons approaching the crossing on the highway would be unable to discover the character of the train until it emerged from the cut at the crossing, it is incumbent on those in charge of the train to use every possible precaution in order to avoid collisions, both by running at a low rate of speed and by a continuous sounding of the bell or whistle for the eighty rods required by the law.</p> <p>2. And in an action for injury resulting from a collision at such a crossing, the fact that the signal was not continuously given in the manner required by the statute, is to be considered in connection with the peculiar mode in which the train was made up, the high rate of speed at which it was running, the dangerous character of the crossing, and the fact that the engineer saw the vehicle in which the person injured was riding, approaching on the highway at the time the signal should have been given.</p> <p>3. Where a train of the character indicated came in collision with the vehicle at such a crossing, resulting in the death of the passenger, it appearing that the engineer saw the vehicle approaching at the time he should have given the signal, but neglecting to do so, except by a single blast of the whistle, and not attempting to check the speed of the train until he whistled down the breaks at the moment of the collision, this was held to be, not merely negligence, but a criminal recklessness of human life, for which the guilty parties might well have been held to answer on the criminal side of the court.</p> <p>4. Nor did the fact that the party killed by the collision was partially deaf, excuse the continuous sounding of. the whistle or ringing of the bell from the point required by the statute. He was at least entitled to such warning of the approach of danger