The Problem With Crowd-Sourced Reporting, In One Short Viral Video

I'm not actually back yet, but I can't resist sharing. It struck me that this illustrates in microcosm both the advantages and the problems of crowd-sourced media. True, someone is there when this weird and unusual mini-event happens...

But then he or she doesn't follow up. If Mike Plews* had been taking that, you can bet he would have wiped off the lens, showed the aftermath, and...well, reported. Were people laughing, and unhurt? Hurt, and crying out? Did the train stop and board passengers, or pass through? Snow can stop trains—did it stop this one?

Reporting wouldn't leave you asking basic questions.

It also shows one of the downsides of keeping your nose buried in your phone. The woman in the foreground is apparently unaware of the world around her until the last seconds. Or maybe it just happened too fast.

Hope no one was hurt.

And, well, that thought I had...trained reporters still needed**. It frustrates me to not know things I want to know about pictures and now, videos.

[UPDATE: Turns out this is being very widely reported/"shared," so it's possible to piece together some provisional information about it. It happened Wednesday, March 15th, at the Amtrak Station at Rhinecliff, New York, 85 miles north of New York City along the Hudson River. The train was Amtrak Empire Service Train 236, the first train of the morning, scheduled to arrive at 9:07 a.m. The video above was shot by Craig Oleszewski. Amtrak has stated generally that using trains to clear snow off tracks is routine, and on Thursday issued a statement about this specific incident saying "Our investigation has determined the train was traveling at the authorized speed when making the station stop and all rules were followed by the engineer." KARE-TV reported that several people were thrown to the ground but there were only minor injuries, including one minor head injury.

A commenter on cs.trains.com noted that "The station guy was probably so proud of the excellent job he did of clearing off the platform, too." A second answered, "Yep—probably just pushed it off the platform and onto the tracks. I've done that on our platform, but not with that much snow." A third added, "Doesn't look like first train after the storm—it looks like first train after a snowblower blew all the platform snow onto the tracks!...Away from the station the plow [on the locomotive] wasn't pushing snow."

At least three people made videos of the event, and the maker of one of the videos was quoted saying that people boarding the train looked "like little frosty ice-men."

So there's a little more of the story. —Mike the Ed.]

While I'm at it, maybe you need to see the world's most awesome indoor RC airplane flight. The model is just under 16 feet wide, balanced to be nearly weightless by filling the fuselage with the right amount of helium. The company that made it is called AirStage. Flown indoors at  Modell Süd Stuttgart (the Stuttgart Model Fair) 2016. The YouTube Commentariat thinks it's a model of a Boeing rather than an Airbus. Either way, very cool.

Mike
(Both vids via Gizmodo via Jalopnik)

*A TOP reader and commenter who's a longtime TV news cameraman, if you don't recognize the name.

**No pun intended.

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Slightly sick but too tired
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Stephen Scharf: "My years of (safely) doing motorsports photojournalism have made me acutely aware of the presence of oncoming vehicles (for example, never walk down an Indy Car pit lane with your back turned to the car or its entrance to the pit box).

"One of the key things motorsports PJs do to stay safe is stay out of 'impact zones.' This is the zone where cars, bikes, dirt, trees, K-walls, photographic equipment on K-walls (never leaver your camera on the K-wall) will end up when said vehicle or vehicle-impact-generated detritus literally goes ballistic. I simply cannot believe that woman stood there that long without realizing what was inevitably going to happen. All I could think while watching her stand there was, 'Get out! You're in an impact zone!'"

Thomas Rink: "Regarding crowd-sourced reporting—I think that this is a big problem with the coverage of recent international conflicts in the media (e.g. near east). Newspapers and broadcasting stations have fewer and fewer reporters out there, due to increasing violence against journalists (but probably also because of tighter budgets). Instead, they increasingly rely on witness of activists and bloggers (e.g. the 'Syrian Observatory for Human Rights'). The problem with this is not only that these people are mostly not trained journalists, but also that it is not clear whether they follow some hidden agenda. For us, this poses the question how reliable our media are—I'd rather have my news reported by a regular journalist."

John R. Barker [of AirStage]: "Hi Mike. Glad you liked it.... Check out our homepage...."

Daniel: "With all the cell phones newspapers will accept anything. Even lower standards when whey get it free. North Dakota at Tunbridge had a row of rails cars alongside the main track. Snow during the blizzard last week drifted eight feet high behind them. Amtrack train comes along on the tracks and doesn't stop—gets stuck. Reports say the snow drift was 25 feet high. Photos show it was no more than eight feet. Measurements after the fact show it no more than eight feet. Minot Daily News goes with 25 feet high and when actual height was called to their attention they did not want to do a correction nor send anyone to double check. Instead they got very pissed off at being told the truth and told those reporting it to them to 'find another newspaper to read.'

"Citizen journalism can be fine. We have seen Pulitzer Prize winning news photos from a Kodak Box Brownie camera from the crowd. Generally a professional photojournalist will get better images and more accurate cutlines. Nothing wrong with any source as long as you are accurate."

mike plews: "Perhaps one of the TOP faithful can tell me who first said that 'a picture is worth a thousand words provided it is accompanied by ten well chosen ones.' I'm not being cute, I honestly can't remember. Edward Steichen? not sure but this clip really begs for some context. Hell of a shot though. In the words of my spirit animal, Eeyore, 'thanks for noticing me.'"

Comments

[Chuck Albertson]

That's why locomotives still have cowcatchers on the front. The Seattle version of this is pedestrians standing next to the street during a downpour, and then shrieking with terror and running (too late!) when a passing truck soaks them by driving through standing water.

[Speed]

Mike wrote, "The woman in the foreground is apparently unaware of the world around her until the last seconds."

My take is that she was making a video as well.

I know next to nothing about trains but I would fault the engineer (train driver?) for driving so fast through the snow next to a platform filled with people.

[Speed]

It's an Airbus ...

Summary of work: construction, branding and on-site flying of a radio controlled Airbus A320 slow flying model with a 5 meter (16 ft) wingspan.

https://www.airstage.biz/airliner

Humans are certainly inventive when it comes to ways to earn a living.

[Roger Bradbury]

Quite a few years ago, about half a dozen of us were out on our motorcycles and we managed to get into one of the pair of airship hangers at Cardington, near Bedford. They housed the R100 and R101 airships.

When we were there, ultralight model aircraft were being flown around inside the hanger. Constructed from simple wire frames with some sort of thin polymer (I think) stretched over them like a soap bubble, they progressed around the still air of the hanger, propelled by relatively huge wire frame and polymer propellors that turned very slowly.

We also saw a set for part of a medieval castle that looked most convincing until we looked round the back to see the wooden framework.

Now, one of the hangers is used by film companies and huge sets are built there.

[Clayton]

Kirk Tuck would have set his white balance before cleaning the lens.

[Darko Hristov]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R51jmndHEr4

[John Yuda]

My local weather blog has a followup.

It sounds like it was intentional (Amtrak was using it as a plow), that several people were knocked to the ground, and there was at least one minor head injury.

That still leaves the question of why Amtrak allowed passengers onto the platform if they were planning to do that.

[jerome]

@stephen Waiting for the train is a boring non-event, as risk prone as watching paint dry and just a tiny bit less exciting. It's the opposite of an impact zone, more like the zone-out zone.

Except, obviously, this time. But then again, probably more impact occurs when people fall asleep while holding an ebook reader in bed.

I hope nobody got hurt, it's really nobody's fault not paying attention to an incoming train, while waiting on the platform.

Oh, one thing - an approaching train doesn't make much noise. Additionally, the snow considerably silences everything, and the flying snow is also next to silent. The people who did not happen to look at the incoming train didn't notice anything until the snow came down on them.

[Ed Hawco]

I totally agree on the frustration that arises from a lack of follow-up. That's been bugging me for years.

That said, I have a few things to add about this video (of the train and the snow). First, if you look closely, you'll see that the woman with the phone doesn't actually have her nose buried in her phone. You can see by the way she's holding it that she's actually taking a photo or video of the train. (Observe her motions as the train approaches, and how she holds the phone straight up, in a plane perpendicular to the ground.)

Second, here is another video that shows the event in "real time" and slow motion, plus a real-time clip at the end from a different bystander who was standing a bit farther back. You can see that there were actually three people shooting photos/video of the train (including, presumably, the creator of the original slo-mo video).

You can see that the snow seems to have knocked people over. Hopefully no serious injuries.

https://youtu.be/R51jmndHEr4

[Mark Roberts]

I'm pretty sure the woman in the foreground was just getting video of the train's arrival (as were at least two other people visible in that clip). A quick look at that clip on YouTube yields a couple of others of the same event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R51jmndHEr4

[Kevin Purcell]

This is not crowdsourced reporting this is "a cool video". It doesn't pretend to be reporting. But like you I'd like to see a video of the aftermath.

I notice several people anticipate the issue and move out of frame to the right as the train arrives. There's at least one guy with a coffee who does this.

The two women in the foreground are videoing the event. Ah, social media and photograph. People get injured or killed doing all sort of "cool shots". They're both aware of the snow and the train arriving. Both have their smartphones out and pointing towards the train (and both are videoing vertically ... FFS).

So a back of the envelope calculation ...

People always underestimate the weight of water. It's 1 tonne per cubic meter (or 62 pounds per cubic foot). Imagine that now. A 1 cubic meter or 1 cubic yard block right next to you. That's as heavy as a small car but a bit softer. Now imagine a one meter cube 5 meters (16 feet) above your head. When it drops on you it'll hit you at about 20 mph. Umph.

Snow density (though it varies a lot) is typically about 1/10 of liquid water for fresh powdery snow. That's 100kg per cubic meter (or 6 lbs per cubic foot). I suspect this snow is a bit denser as it's packed down over a couple of days but not too much.

The train is about 2.5m wide and the platform is 1.2m above the top of the rail (and the snow overtops the platform by about 0.3m) so that's about 3.75 cubic meters of snow in each meter of platform (or 41 cubic feet per foot). About a third of a tonne of snow per meter and the train ploughs through, say, 10 meters or so (a nice round number).

The train moves about three tonnes of snow into the air at perhaps 20 mph (10m/s) (you can see it moves ahead of the train). Perhaps 1 tonne of that lands on the platform. I wonder if that much snow might have an impact if some of it hit someone? It has about the same momentum as FIFTY 100kg (220lb) guys walking at 4mph. Imagine a guy like that walking into you when you didn't expect it.

If you look closely before the the images is whited out the women in front get hit by a wave of snow and is visible pushed by it before she disappears into the snow. I suspect she ended up on the floor but wasn't hurt but may have been a bit surprised. A bit like getting walked into by a fluffy linebacker.

Another way to phrase this might be: would you stand under the eves of a house roof with a 1 meter of snow that would fall about 5 meters (two story house would do) onto you. That would be a similar sort of impact.

Water. It's heavier than you think. When it moves it has more momentum that you think, too.

The aircraft model is an Airbus: see the wing fences on the underside of the wing. That's a very characteristic mark for IDing Airbus versus the "clean wing" Boeing aircraft. I live under the approach to SeaTac (SEA) and do this all the time.

Check also the cockpit windows shape, the lack of a fin extension, the fuselage projection beyond the fin, the flat top at the rear of the fuselage.). All point to an Airbus.

e.g. http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1436/how-can-i-tell-apart-an-airbus-from-a-boeing

It's just like doing sparrow ID to a birder: they all look the same but if you look more carefully you can see the differences. That might a good idea for a photographer.

[c.d.embrey]

This ain't reporting, it's a ha-h-a-funny incident, sorta an unplanned MTV Jackass stunt.

BTW this is common in the NEC. Rail-Fans shoot a lot of footage of plowed snow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npm4ElvJWJg

[D. Hufford]

It looks to me like, rather than having her nose buried in her phone unaware, she was more interested in videoing the scene than safety---like nearly everyone else on the platform. Sorta like the new fad of filming tornadoes when one ought to be in shelter.

[Lindsay]

On second look of the train video in full screen mode, it looks like everyone was trying to get a picture of the train blowing through the drifts in the station rather than merely being buried in their phones -- a different narrative altogether.

[hugh crawford]

That's the Rhinecliff Amtrack station, a station I have used hundreds of times, first when I was a student at Bard and some years later when I was living at Rokby. It figures prominently in many a weird story. Claimed to be cursed by Kenneth Anger* Really need to finish that book ...

*Accounts are unclear whether he refused to take a teaching job at Bard because the station was cursed, or that he placed a curse on the station after the job fell through. Subsequent events around the station are consistent with both versions.

[Alan Carmody]

This is just another example of what you have previously written about. Taking photographs near a train track can be extremely dangerous. Stand well clear of a train when it pulls in to a station, because there is little margin for safety if something goes wrong.

All I could think of when I saw that video was "Hidden blocks of ice!"

I shudder to think what the momentum transferred by a 1,000 ton passenger train to a 10 pound block of ice is.

[mike plews]

Mike
If I might elaborate a little on my earlier comment. If this had been a news story we would have broken it up into two parts. The first would have been the "runs, hits and errors" aspect of the clip. This would cover the basic journalistic needs of the story, the who, what, where and when of it.
That covered it would open it up to a richer "real people" take on the event. The moment that train hit the snowbank everyone on the platform had a unique story to tell. If you could get to them while they were brushing off the snow you would likely hit gold. My experience in situations like this is that you will first get the predictable (but valid) responses but from time to time you also get something amazing. I like to imagine that if you asked the person lost in their phone what they thought when the train came in their answer would be "oh no, not again". Not likely but you never know until you ask. Sadly that opportunity is now gone forever.

[s.wolters]

My photography teacher at art school explained once the effect of an ultra wide angle like this: “Don’t use it when shooting a fast approaching snowplow!”

[Ed G.]

I'm probably the 30th person to point this out, but I think the lady in the foreground isn't oblivious, she's taking a video of the train on her cell phone. Like everyone else of the platform, it looks like.

[Anthony Shaughnessy]

I think nostalgia about the olden days when newspapers reported the news with high journalistic standards is the same as any other kind of nostalgia. It just wasn't so. I've been disillusioned for a long time with print and broadcast news media and part of this is from frustration when I hear them report a story where they have obviously done little or no investigation of what was behind it. Not a new phenomenon.
Anthony

[JonA]

Mike,

You may be interested in Dan Rather's new company "News and Guts" that is using social media, but with old journalistic values of truth and not taking sides. My wife follows it and has respect for it. In this era of fake news and extremely biased news, it is very welcome. When Trump refused to answer a question from a CNN journalist, News and Guts said something to the effect of: the correct journalistic response to that is no journalists ask questions until Trump answers the CNN journalist's question. Instead what happens is journalists all want the limelight rather than banding together for press rights.

[Len Salem]

Reading about the Airbus model reminded me of a long held fantasy of mine in which one could buy a camera bag with helium filled partitions that made it so much lighter to carry.
Maybe....

[John Krill]

It isn't just items like the train video but go to sites like flickr or Instagram and notice how many photos have no captions. On Flickr many photos only have the default filename!

Everyone needs to learn the art of the caption.

[Richard Parkin]

The snow on the track has been pushed there from the platform as shown by the sharp vertical edge. Seems to me there could have been some fairly solid blocks in there due to the compaction and I would have beaten a retreat.

[Chris C]

Watching closely, I think there must have been a warning to stand clear as about half the people on the platform back off. Those that remain all look like they are trying to video or photograph the scene.

I'm sure getting hit by that wall of snow would have hurt!

[nvonstaden]

They were too busy checking they're arms and legs...then the cameras they were using to do any follow-uo.

[Michael Perini]

Amtrack did comment and said the train was moving at the proper speed for snow removal so engineer was not at fault"
Others commented that the platform had been previously cleared of show which was probably thrown onto the tracks, resulting in far more snow being on that section of track, which resulted in the explosion we all saw.
Still looked like he was going a bit fast for the conditions to me.