Is that clear? Most people don't get hit by trains, so I don't think that's clear. I'd say most people are cautious around trains while a minority aren't, and a minority of those who aren't will get hit by trains.
There's a physiological reason why people have a tendency to underestimate risk in certain situations, or miss obvious pending collisions. The usual comment from someone who has had such a collision is "They just came out of nowhere". See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23024275
Airplane pilots (particularly military fast jet), and ship captains are taught specific techniques to deliberately and systematically overcome these physiological limitations. Some of the techniques are taught in some driving schools (for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18157090 ) and to be frank I think driving education should go all-out on it.
Might I still be hit by a train I never saw at all? Sure. Somebody I knew in highschool was hit by a train on a track he believed was abandoned and consequently, never looked down (he lived after being pushed 100m down the track). It's possible that might happen to me, at least if I ever forget that it happened to him. But what won't happen is getting hit by a train I see and judge to be moving slowly or not at all, because I stop for any train I see no matter how much time I think I might have to cross the track.
> Airplane pilots (particularly military fast jet), and ship captains are taught specific techniques to deliberately and systematically overcome these physiological limitations.
The "specific technique to overcome this physiological limitation" is: Don't race trains. Don't race trains even when you feel certain you can easily beat the train. Racing trains is stupid.
Nobody cares what you do all the time, though. In order to reduce accidents overall, we care about what the average person does. And if the average person does something else, then common sense isn't really the right term.
And even average person isn't the right bar. To really cut down on accidents, we need to see what the person who's behaviour is a couple of standard deviations less safe does in various scenarios.
