(The following article by Ed Anderson was posted on the New Orleans Times-Picayune website on June 23.)
BATON ROUGE, La. — After 10 train-vehicle deaths around Memorial Day, Louisiana is set to match or surpass its record of train fatalities, safety experts said Tuesday.
Louisiana Highway Traffic Safety Commission Executive Director Jim Champagne said the state has chalked up 14 vehicular-train deaths this year, compared to 15 all of last year.
“We are looking at 30 to 35 deaths if we keep going at the same level,” Champagne said. And the summer vacation season has just started, he said. The record was set in 1992 with 32 deaths.
Champagne made the dire prediction at a news conference announcing an earlier-than-planned release of radio commercials to remind drivers to stop at train crossings.
Betsey Williams Tramonte, executive director of Operation Lifesaver in the state, an organization that promotes rail-vehicle safety, said there were 146 train-vehicle accidents last year, resulting in 15 deaths and 42 injuries — figures that were lower than previous years, but numbers that still ranked the state among the worst in the nation for such accidents.
In 2003, she said, the state had the third-highest number of collisions, the fifth-highest number of fatalities and the sixth-highest number of injuries from vehicle-train accidents, she said.
The figures do not include another seven deaths and 12 injuries reported as a result of individuals trespassing on rail cars on private railroad property, she said.
Operation Lifesaver has come up with $42,000 from federal, state and private sources to air radio commercials on 72 stations that are affiliates of the Louisiana Network. The commercials feature country singers including Pam Tillis and Charlie Daniels, warning drivers to be careful at train crossings. The radio ad campaign started Monday and will run through the week of Aug. 9.
Tramonte said the commercials are aimed at men between 29 and 54, which includes about 300,000 men, about 31 percent of the state’s driving population.
“These are the same people who ride in pickup trucks and don’t buckle seat belts who challenge the trains,” Champagne said of the drivers who “tempt fate” by running through crossing gates because they do not wait for trains to pass. Most of the fatalities last year and this year, he said, also involved drivers who had been drinking.
Champagne said that after the radio commercials are scheduled to end, he will look for money in his budget to keep the commercials playing “throughout the years” as a continued reminder.
Ken Perret, an assistant secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development, said his agency has budgeted about $8 million a year to improve rail safety and upgrade or install safety devices at rail crossings.