(The following story by Cathy Allred appeared on the Daily Herald website on June 18. Walt Webster is a retired member of BLET Division 846 in Salt Lake City, Utah.)
PROVO, Utah — Walt Webster has seen three fatalities during his tenure as a train engineer for the Pacific Union Railroad.
Now retired, Webster is the assistant coordinator of Operation Lifesaver working with CARE, the Crossing Accident Reduction Enforcement program. He helped host a media trip for Operation Lifesaver on Tuesday through Utah County on Union Pacific’s 1989 commemorative engine with travel cars built in the mid-50s.
The Bountiful resident has given more than 2,400 presentations on train-crossing safety and has assisted in six Operation Lifesaver runs in 12 years.
A nonprofit international public-education program, Operation Lifesaver’s goal is to end collisions, deaths and injuries at highway-rail grade crossings and along railroad rights-of-way. It is a program that is sponsored cooperatively by federal, state and local government agencies.
It’s a program Webster firmly believes in. When there is a crash with a fatality, the victim’s friends and family are not the only ones affected.
“It’s very traumatic for the train crew, even [when] you’ve got someone using the train as an instrument for committing suicide,” Webster said. “You can’t get that thought out of your head, the sound of the train going over [the body]. The ‘thunk’ is pretty disgusting, too.”
Incidents of death by train and vehicle crashes are actually higher than death involving crashes between two vehicles or death by a commercial flight. Every two hours, a pedestrian or vehicle is involved in a collision with a train.
Since Operation Lifesaver began in 1972, the number of incidents involving trains and people has dropped significantly.
“That’s more proof that these types of programs are working,” said Rick Thornton, senior special agent and public safety officer for Union Pacific. “We’ve stepped up the activity in the last few years, so we have seen a reduction.”
Ninety-one incidents were recorded in 1978 in Utah, and today the average is less than 20 — there were 15 incidents in 2007 and zero deaths involving a train.
While hosting the trip Tuesday morning, Thornton gave out four citations and one trespass warning while in Provo to motorists and pedestrians for crossing the train tracks in front of an approaching train.
“The more citations that we issue, they are going to talk to their friends, they are going to talk to their neighbors, they are going to talk to people at work, they are going to talk to everybody in their family and tell them what happened when they received a citation,” Thornton said. “So it’s a goal of ours to put the word out so that when somebody else goes to run a crossing and they see that, they say, ‘Oh no, I know what is going to happen.’ I think it’s very effective.”
He said it also helps the police officers understand the problem areas.
“It lets local law enforcement know that they have other areas that they can pay attention to when they have the time,” Thornton said.
Safety tips
• Be aware that trains cannot stop quickly.
• Always anticipate a train approaching on the tracks.
• Do not stand on or near the tracks.
• An average train overhangs the track by at least three feet.
• An approaching train is actually moving faster than it appears.