Replying to a message of Daryl Stout to Lee Lofaso:

 DS>   One incident here had a lady driving down a street named "Baseline
 DS> Road" (so named as it runs along a U.S. "base
line")...she had her
 DS> windows up, air conditioning and radio on, and she was talking on her
 DS> cellphone. 

 DS>   She went RIGHT THROUGH the lowered crossing gate at the double 
 DS> tracked crossing.

Years ago, at about 10 pm one evening I stopped at a service station in Omaha
to get gas.  I noticed a bright white light flashing up the street, and then saw a
fire engine pulling out of a station there.  Said fire engine proceeded toward me
and the intersection, with enough lights on it to light a carnival midway and a
siren loud enough to wake the dead.  When it reached the intersection it was
doing all of *five* mph and some idiot cut in front of it on the cross street,
missing the front bumper of the fire engine by about five feet.  The idiot was
totally oblivious of the existence of that fire engine despite all the lights - long
after dusk - and siren.  And that, of course, explains why the fire engine was
doing all of *five* mph at that intersection.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+