Passage 1

One evening, 60-year-old June Griffith was on her way home when she took a right turn at an unfamiliar intersection. Almost immediately, however, she realized that she had gone the wrong way. She slowed to a crawl and looked into the dark, searching for a place where she could return to the main road. The headlights in the opposite lane made it hard to see. After a minute or two, she spotted what looked like a road that would take her around the block and back to the intersection. As she turned right, the rear end of her car scraped pavement and the wheels dropped a few inches, landing with a loud thump.In the dark, Griffith froze. Then she shifted into reverse. The rear tires rolled onto the road behind her, but the front wheel well snagged (卡住)on something and the car stopped. Griffith realized the problem then: She’d driven onto railroad tracks and the underside of her car was caught.As Griffith tried to move the car, its swaying headlights attracted the attention of a passerby, Jordan Ricks, a college student.“Ma’am, are you okay?”Ricks asked.“No, I’m stuck,’Griffith replied.Ricks could see the potential for calamity. But he tried to appear calm as he instructed Griffith to put the car in neutral. Both of them could now see the wheel well stuck between the rails and the uneven track bed. Ricks put his hands under the front fender and gave it a heave (上提). It didn’t move. He shoved it again with all his strength. Still, no movement.From about 50 feet away, a group of students watched the scene. Ricks motioned to them, and five of the guys came over. They clearly were both nervous and amused. “Come on," Ricks told them. “This could be anybody’s grandma.”He directed them to different sides of the car, and they all put their hands under the frame. “One, two, three!'” Ricks yelled. They all heaved.“One, two, three!” he yelled again. The car didn’t move.At that moment, they felt the ground begin to shake. Then four dings signaled an oncoming train, red beacons flashed from posts on either side of the tracks. In the distance, a fuzzy beam of light appeared, followed by the roar of a horn.The guys started yelling, “Get out of the car!”But Griffith felt paralyzed. When she glanced in the rearview mirror, she saw the train lights approaching. But she worried that the arthritis (关节炎)in her feet would prevent her from escaping in time and that her car would be damaged. One of the students saw her stunned face and reached for the car door and yanked it open.The train was just a few hundred feet away. The brakes shrieked. In the last few seconds, Ricks grabbed Griffith’s arm and pulled her from the car. Other students grabbed her other arm, and they dragged Griffith to a nearby stairway.They watched as the train smashed into the car, crushing it into half its original size and sending metal pieces flying. Griffith sat crying as police arrived and sorted through the wreckage—and wrote her a ticket for inattentive driving.A few days later, a reporter asked the young men and Griffith to reunite at a local coffee shop. There a tearful Griffith hugged her rescuers.Griffith’s story hit the local TV news. A family decided to donate a car when they knew Griffith’s predicament that her insurer was not going to replace her car. Griffith was overwhelmed by their generosity. “These boys are heroes,”she would later tell anyone who would listen. "They saved my life.”Ricks feels only gratitude for the outcome. "It was one of those moments,” he says, “when we could have been gone together. It makes you think how precious life is.”

What caused Griffith's panic on her way home that evening?