This is werid back then people use to listen to signs about trains warnings now their not listening and lots of people are getting killed. l think humanity is becoming dummer. l think they shud put tighter security on rail roads

Nobody has the patience to wait. Everything has to be now. Its all about being inconvenienced anymore.the train is taking too long.vroom, l am out of here.Bang, Crash hit be train. Same goes for people driving. Your too slow you are inconveniencing me.People just want it now.no patience in the world.

''humanity is becoming dummer'' (that is just too funny)

''beat pass the train'' huh?

''werid'' (ok, that was probably a typo)

''shud''

''their not listening'' (should be ''they're'')

Oh, & railway & railroad r one word, not two

You're supporting ur own case about our society getting dumber in ur own posting.

Just so l do not get accused of being picky & not addressing the question, this has been happening as long as there have been trains & cars. People just r not patient all the time, it is the same as passing on the shoulder, running lights, speeding. The big difference is we now hear about everything, the internet has caused our news to spread & be more available than ever. l have not seen any stats, but l would guess that fewer people r killed at railway crossings now than in decades past.


EDIT - the numbers have declined over the years, contrary to those who have said otherwise.

''Collisions & fatalities at highway/rail grade crossings have declined over the past 30 years by almost 75 percent''

There is more, check the link below.

Plain and simple. Some people never have been in or seen an accident with a train. As an ex firefighter, I've seen a few of them. It would really make a person think.

Modern trains are very quiet and travel at high speeds. Even if you are aware it is coming, it is very difficult to judge speed of an oncoming object as is does not move much against the reference background.

The old electric trams had a similar problem, so it is nothing new.

A fence should be security enough, if someone is dumb enough to climb over the fence then Darwinism can take over.

an incident like this happened in Australia country Victoria a few days ago, made a mess of the car and killed both the mother and the daughter. sad to see things like this happening. you can put as much security on things as you like, people will choose weather they use the aid provided or feel that 'they no better.'
problem is a train does not pull up quick, took 1km for it to stop.

People vary widely in their ability to evaluate situations and make decisions about hazards, especially in a moving changing situation like driving a car.

Improvements in grade crossing protection have been made continuously since the early days of railroading, and continue to be made now. But as long as it is possible to make these mistakes, people will make them.

Your English is not bad, but you still need to do some work on spelling and word use.

Excellent question & l suppose there r as many reasons as there r idiots running the gates.

Sometimes the gates r stuck in the down position & when people see that one time, they assume every time the gates come down . . . . . . . it is a false alarm.

Here is something l have observed from the cab a lot, if a train is coming at a relatively higher speed, say 40 MPH or above, people will drive right across. If the train is close to the crossing but stopped or nearly so, they will stop, inch ahead, stop & then finally squirt across. They must think a train can take off like a stone from a slingshot.
Our most dangerous peice of track is a 40 mile branch line, trains only run in the day & maximum speed is 25 MPH, more people have been killed there than on our main line, & a lot of those have been people driving into the SIDE of the train that is already occupying the crossing!!

Crossing gates that r more secure would be good, for a variety of reasons. We could stop the need for blowing the whistle so much, it has been done in many cities where the train travel is relatively slower. Makes for a better quality of living in areas near the tracks & when people DO hear the whistle it gets their attention because it is not done so much.

Another thing l have noticed, is that modern cars have such excellent sound insulation that train whistles & bells r very difficult to hear unless u have a window down.

To live u need to look, every time.

l saw in parts of Europe that there r better crossing protection systems & train whistles r seldom sounded.

With all due respect to ''Conan the Grammarian'' above, there r NOT fewer people getting killed at grade crossings these days. When lumping death & injuries together, grade crossing accidents r running a close second to drunk driving as a means by which people r getting maimed & killed in their automobiles. That number continues to rise each year.

Impatience & ignorance, not stupidity, is the primary cause for grade crossing accidents, followed by suicide. Purely lack of education. Instruction about the hazards should be a part of grade school & high school curriculum.

To that end, did u know that:

Most accidents occur when the train is moving at or less less than 30 MPH?

The speed of a train is hard to gauge by observing it, due to its size & length?

The speed of a train is harder to gauge when it is moving along something parallel to the tracks, such as a row of trees or a high fence (NOT obscuring sight line)?

Crossing gate protection is NOT failsafe (Yes, they have battery back up, but they can fail for other reasons)?

In snowy conditions, the locomotive whistle gets plugged with snow & operates very poorly or not at all?

People will hesitate to pull out in front of a semi-truck but have no qualms about trying to beat a train across the crossing?

If l can see you, it is already too late to stop for you?

There is one other factor, demonstrated perfectly by the old addage, ''Familiarity breeds contempt.''

For those who travel the same route each day, for whatever reason, get used to the grade crossings they must traverse and, when seeing trains operate over it time after time, they assume that things operate the same day after day. Until one day, things r not the same. Today, the train was ''on the wrong track'' or running the other direction for once.

Gates down, a person looks where they would expect the see the approaching train and, seeing nothing, they pull across. Too bad the train was coming the other way this one time out of a thousand. It does not matter. You're just as dead.

Chances are, the average motorist or pedestrian will never see bits of grey matter, skull & hair pasted to the front of a locomotive, but l have. And the regular denizens here, like Rango, Derail & others have seen horribly gruesome sights as well. That is why we keep banging the safety drum over & over. Is this necessary? l would argue ''yes,'' until the numbers start to drop.

It should be pointed out that people r not always killed when struck. This is not always a bargain, either, as people come to find out that there r indeed things worse than death.

At most grade crossings, stopping is rarely an option, but looking & listening (remembering the whistle may be clogged with snow during a snow storm) is easy, free & not time consuming in the least.

Turn off the music, roll down the window & turn ur head from side to side. Very cheap life insurance.

Questions related to safety always get a star from me. Here is yours.

Thanks for asking.

Addendum: Since this is an important & safety sensative subject, l will add the following words.

l followed the link to brainys world.

Strangely enough, the info there echoed what l have stated above. Well done brainy!

And, sure enough, it says ''Collisions & fatalities at highway/rail grade crossings have declined over the past 30 years by almost 75%.''

It also says, ''A typical train is 7,000 feet & weighs 3,200 tons.'' l am sure the other rails hanging out 'round here got a chuckle out of that. l know l did.

But, here is something it did not say:

Data thresholds changed for certain elements beginning with 2002. The extreme drop in the incidents, injuries, collisions, & not otherwise classifieds (personal casualties) for 2002, as well as the years that have followed, is due to the change of the incident thresholds, specifically the definition of injuries, in the NTD. The injury definition was changed for the 2002 revision of the NTD to coincide with other USDOT modes.

Why the change? ''Litigation.'' If u change the number of the injured by changing the definition of ''injury,'' as has been done, the stats look better & it is harder to bring a suit against any entity following the incident.

In other words, they changed the record keeping paradigm, or ''cooked the books.'' It is the same for phony unemployment statistics. Only those actively looking for work r counted. The rest r not considered unemployed. They r calssified as ''disenfranchised work force.'' Sure sounds good, though.

Juggle the numbers all u want. More people r getting killed & injured all the time. It is a matter of where their numbers fall & into which category. Lump all of them together, as was done bfore 2002, then u get a meaningful statistic.

The bottom line is always the same, however. It is the responsibility of the motorist or pedestrian to saty out of the way. Trains do not go hunting for people, but they have no qualms about killing or dismembering you, should u come to them.

Some people just have no idea something that big can be covering ground so fast. l hit a car once & the woman lived & she told the police officer it looked like she had plenty of time to make it & wanted to know why l did not stop!We run 18,000 ton coal trains on our line that take a mile & a half to stop.Other people r just plain dumb.we have quiet zones now where we do not blow the whistle.They have dividers in the center of the road so motorists can not go around the gates.But l have seen people drive down the wrong side of the road so they can get across before we get there.People like that need to see what a car looks like that takes a hit from a train moving 70mph. l hit a truck once & the crash was so violent that we had the magnets from the stereo speakers in the doors stuck to the front of the engine.The only way to tell it was a vehicle was by the tires,the rest looked like a cube of metal scrap.They had to wash what was left of that man off the front of the engine.Very sad!

l agree.
Not only at railroad crossing, but in front of sound-free lightrail also.

l have seen many pedestrian when there was Long Island Railroad at its station, passengers just only care about themselve and do not want to miss the train.

On RiverLine and Hudson-Bergen Lightrails, and they suppose to wait for lightrail if they see lightrail at station, not to go in front of them to catch.

People r in too much of a hurry. They do not want to have to stop for a couple of minutes. They do not judge the speed at which the train is coming properly, thinking it is going slower than it really is. Also, they do not consider stopping distance. Figure out how quickly ur car stops at 45mph & then multiply that by thousands to get how far a train will travel. Depending on weight, it could take up to a couple of miles to come to a dead stop. Just remember people, when u r hit by a train, it wo not come to a dead stop, but u proabaly will come to a DEAD stop. A train hitting a car has the same force & result as a car hitting a aluminum soda can. Try that experiment & see what results. Then think twice if u want to be that soda can in the future.

It is absolutely astounding. l believe what the people who work on a railroad say. Although l never worked on one, I've seen some instances that l will never understand.

l once worked in an office building next to a railroad. Nearly every day l saw cars race trains to the crossing. I've seen pedestrians actually climb aboard stopped freight trains to cross. And yes, one even climbed on a slow-moving train & jumped off the other side. l still cannot imagine what was on the other side that was that important.

l also rode in a locomotive with a friend of mine who worked on the railroad years ago. Yeah, he could have gotten in trouble for letting me, but that is another story. l was amazed at the number of close calls, & l was only in the cab for about eight hours. We missed three cars & two pickups by mere feet. Nearly crushed a pedestrian sauntering slowly across the tracks, completely oblivious to the crossing signals & the train is whistle. l will never forget the look on her face as she looked up at the last second & saw us whiz past, missing her by no more than ten feet. l will also never forget the engineer saying ''come on lady, come on lady, get across'' as we were approaching.

The LAST thing an engineer (or any other member of a train crew) wants to do is hit someone. l do not think they ever get used to it. ''Do not do it, do not do it,'' this particular engineer would mutter at some of the cars just itching to cross ahead of us. He seemed to be able to sense which ones would wait & which ones wouldn't.

l just wish everyone would remember that when u race a train to the crossing, you're gambling ur life. And u better win, because if u tie, u lose.

Pure stupidity! Personally l think everyone that thinks they can beat a passing train should be given the Darwin Award!

l live in the San Fransisco Bay Area. About once a month we hear of someone either at the Stations or just TRESPASSING getting severely injured or killed.

The person u should feel sorry for is the Engineer. Hell all they can do is sit there & watch it happen, & they r totally helpless to do anything about it.

One of my relatives is an Engineer for Amtrak on the Coast Starlight. When he used to work for Southern Pacific he had a situation where this fool in a truck decided to circumvent the crossing gates. All he could do was sound the horn & hit the brakes. Needless to say the 1985 S-10 lost the battle against 4 SD-40-2T is heading Southbound through Gilroy.

Its not like these things stop on a dime!

Just for the record, security for the trains is just about as tight as its going to get for grade crossings. There is too much open territory here in the US to get it all fenced up.

However, if u want to make a difference u might want to check out Operation Lifesaver. Its a program sponsored by the railroads & the Federal Railway Administration for Railroad Safety.

Good Luck!