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Train wreck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A train wreck most often occurs as a result of an accident, such as when a train wheel jumps off a track in a derailment, or miscommunication, as when a moving train meets another train on the same track, or when a boiler explosion occurs. Train wrecks were occasionally staged for public entertainment; crowds watched as two vacant trains were deliberately sent speeding toward each other.
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Because train wrecks usually cause widespread property damage as well as injury or death, the intentional wrecking of a train in regular service is often treated as an extremely serious crime. For example, in the U.S. state of California, the penalty for intentionally causing a non-fatal train wreck is life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.[1] For a fatal train wreck, the possible sentences are either life without the possibility of parole, or death.
The term is sometimes used metaphorically to describe a disaster that you can see coming but cannot stop, such as former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich's assertion that a government shutdown would be a "train wreck."[2]
The term "train wreck" is also used metaphorically to describe something distasteful or disastrous, yet inevitable, or something distasteful yet compelling in some form ("You don't want to stare, but you just can't look away"). A person may be described in this way as being a "train wreck".[citation needed]
In software development, method chains of the style: getThis().getThat().getTheOther() are referred to as "train wrecks". The term is pejorative because their use breaks the Law of Demeter in addition to being stylistically cumbersome.
- ^ Section 219. California Penal Code. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.
- ^ Holman, Kwame (1996-11-20). The State of Newt". PBS. Retrieved on 2007-08-17.