Anyone who’s come up to a railway crossing in Indonesia has likely seen motorcyclists (and sometimes car drivers) risking their lives by going through the intersection even while under threat of an incoming train.
Not all railway crossings in Indonesia are equipped with automatic gates and it’s still very common to see people — often street thugs — serving as unofficial railway crossing guards, like these two guys in a recent viral video, who seem to take their jobs very, very seriously.
https://youtu.be/q3gpE0oveQQ
In the video, a motorcyclist is seen attempting to cross the intersection even while the siren warning of an incoming train is going off. Thankfully, the railway crossing guards stopped him from crossing the track, albeit very aggressively, with one of them kicking the motorcycle.
Perhaps aware that he was wrong, or perhaps intimidated by the guards, the motorcyclist backed down and backed up. Within seconds, a train passed the crossing.
The video has gone wildly viral this week, with many netizens looking past the men’s appearances and aggression to praise them for doing a job that could save people’s lives.
According to the video’s description, it was taken yesterday in the Mojoanyar sub-district of Mojokerto Regency in East Java.
Railway crossing accidents are unfortunately common in Indonesia, often the result of motorists disregarding safety precautions, deliberately or otherwise. A major incident occurred in West Jakarta in 2015, during which 18 people were killed by a crash between a KRL Commuterline train and a minibus after the latter drove past a closed gate at the crossing.
More recently, two people died in a horrific collision between a train and a van on a railway crossing in Senen, Central Jakarta, In June 2017. In December of that year, a young traffic police officer was posthumously hailed as a hero when he was struck by a train trying to save some reckless motorists in the Jombang Regency of East Java.
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