(The following article by Walt Bogdanich was posted on the New York Times website on December 2.)
NEW YORK — The Federal Railroad Administration should stop accepting the word of railroads when they blame drivers for most collisions at grade crossings and should instead do more of its own research into the accidents’ causes, the Transportation Department’s inspector general said in a report released yesterday.
The federal report also said the railroad administration should be more forceful in enforcing safety rules when railroads do not properly maintain crossing signals. Only about 5 percent of the “critical defects” in signals found by inspectors could have resulted in fines, the report stated.
Noting that deaths at grade crossings rose 11 percent last year, the inspector general said, “Greater attention is needed in the areas of reporting and investigating grade crossing collisions, and strengthening enforcement when an F.R.A. inspector cites a railroad for a safety defect.”
The report found that railroads had failed to promptly report 21 percent of the most serious collisions at grade crossings, reducing the chances of a proper federal investigation. The unreported accidents from May 2003 to December 2004 involved 116 deaths.
Even when collisions are reported, the inspector general found, the railroad administration investigated “very few” of them, 9 of the 3,045 that occurred in 2004.
“F.R.A. did not routinely review locomotive event recorder data, police reports, and other sources of information to determine the causes of the collisions or the need for further investigation,” the report stated.
The report was prepared at the request of several members of Congress who expressed concern about rail safety problems reported last year in a series of articles in The New York Times.
In a statement, Joseph H. Boardman, the agency administrator, said that his agency had already taken steps to ensure that railroads properly reported accidents and that federal regulators now had a clearer idea of when accidents should be investigated.
“The report recognizes many of the aggressive actions taken by F.R.A. in the past two years to improve our grade crossing safety inspection and enforcement capabilities,” Mr. Boardman said.
The agency also said the number of collisions at grade crossings declined by 34 percent from 1995 to 2004 and had dipped 6 percent so far this year.