(The Cleveland Plain Dealer posted the following story by Rena A. Koontz on its website on May 16.)
CLEVELAND — On Monday, a 37-year-old mother and her 5-year-old daughter were killed when an Amtrak passenger train hit their Chevrolet Blazer at a railroad crossing in Gary, Ind.
Witnesses said the woman ignored the flashing red lights and drove around the lowered gates that partially blocked the crossing. Another car had done it just ahead of her.
It is those types of drivers that Operation Lifesaver is trying to reach.
Depending on the speed of a train, it generally takes about 26 seconds from the time a crossing gate drops to the time an engine reaches an intersection. At 50 mph, it would take a train a mile or more to stop, said Shel Senek, state coordinator for Ohio Operation Lifesaver.
The Operation Lifesaver Enforcement Train traveled through Medina County on Wednesday. Its mission was to give riders a glimpse of railroad crossings from the train engineer’s perspective, and to put motorists to the test:
Do they stop or do they try to beat the train?
Fifty-four law enforcement officers staked out the 71 crossings the Lifesaver train passed in its trip from Canton, through Akron, through Medina County to Erhart Road, on the border of Litchfield and York townships, and back.
By the trip’s end, 26 people were cited for driving through gateless crossings when the lights were flashing. More than half of them were in Medina County.
“People would be astonished to see the number of violations. We need to make people more aware of the dangers of crossing tracks when lights are flashing,” said Medina County Commissioner Patricia Geissman, who was among the train’s passengers.
Particularly disturbing was the group of young boys who ran to beat the oncoming train outside Hotchkiss Elementary School in Akron, where in 2001, an 11-year-old boy was hit by a passing train and lost parts of both his legs. Wednesday, police were able to grab only one of the boys.
Geissman heads the Medina County Railroad Task Force. She vowed to share her experience on the train with the county group and to make education part of its focus. Already, the task force has identified the most dangerous of the 108 crossings in the county and is working to improve them.
Last year, Medina County had three railroad crossing accidents. In 2001, there were eight, the highest number in the state. Since 1991, there have been 56 train-vehicle crashes in the county, two that were fatal, according to statistics from the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Senek said 46 percent of all railroad crossing crashes happen when the crossing gates and lights are in operation.
“It shows people are still making poor choices and using poor judgment,” he said.