(The following story by Kristina Smith appeared on the Port Clinton News Herald website on November 19.)
PORT CLINTON, Ohio — Two 18-year-old women running late to school Wednesday morning didn’t want to wait for trains to pass at local railroad crossings.
So when they approached crossings where signals had just begun to warn of an oncoming train, they sped around the gates instead of stopping.
They didn’t get far. Police officers waiting near the crossings quickly pulled them over.
The officers were part of Operation Lifesaver, a program that coordinated police from Toledo to Elyria Wednesday, allowing officers to view driving violations from a Norfolk Southern train while others gave driving offenders citations.
The two women drivers, who bypassed gates near Gypsum and outside Port Clinton, and a third driver, who did the same near Sandusky, demonstrated exactly the opposite of what drivers should do when a train is approaching, said Don Rozick, locomotive engineer for Norfolk Southern.
“As far as I’m concerned, when you start driving around the gates, you’re betting your life, and personally, I don’t like the odds,” said Rozick, who has been involved in numerous crashes during his 34 years with the company.
Freight trains travel at 60-65 miles per hour, and AMTRAK passenger trains usually run at 79 mph, Rozick said. They move a lot faster than they appear to, giving drivers very little time to speed around the crossing gates unharmed, he said.
It takes trains an average of a mile and a half to stop, said Sheldon Senek, state coordinator for Operation Lifesaver.
And 50 percent of fatal car-train crashes in Ohio happen at crossings that have active warnings, such as gates and lights, Senek said. “Chances are you’re going to die (if hit by a train).”
Those who ignore the signs to yield for a train can be charged with failure to stop at a railroad crossing, a fourth-degree misdemeanor that carries a maximum sentence of 30 days in jail and a $250 fine, Senek said.
The railroad the officers monitored Wednesday stretches from Toledo to Elyria and passes through Oak Harbor, Port Clinton and Sandusky.
“We’ve had some horrendous crashes on this corridor,” said Senek, noting there is heavy Norfolk Southern freight train traffic and AMTRAK trains.
Law enforcement officers rode the train and watched the tracks from a video monitor to learn more about the driving offenses and be alerted to them, Senek said.
Driving offenses aren’t the only problem Operation Lifesaver is concerned about. A growing number of train accidents nationwide involve trains hitting pedestrians, Senek said.
In Ottawa County, a train hit and killed an 85-year-old blind man who was crossing the tracks in September in downtown Oak Harbor, and in August an 8-year-old Fremont boy was also killed while walking on tracks in Danbury Township.
Railroad tracks, except for public crossings, are considered private property, and those who walk on them are trespassing, Senek said. Operation Lifesaver hopes to educate people of the dangers and the possible penalties of walking on the tracks as well as crossing them illegally, he said.