(The following story by David Patch appeared on the Toledo Blade website on September 2.)
TOLEDO, Ohio — A federal investigator has announced plans to audit railroad grade-crossing inspection and accident records to determine whether accidents are being reported promptly and investigated appropriately.
The announcement by the office of Kenneth Mead, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation, follows a request from several congressional leaders.
The congressmen, in turn, were responding to articles The New York Times published in July charging that railroads routinely failed to report grade-crossing crashes to two federal agencies in a timely manner, failed to preserve evidence from crash scenes, and occasionally took actions that may have interfered with accident investigations.
Mr. Mead’s office plans to review records at the Federal Railroad Administration, Federal Highway Administration, regional offices of both agencies, and state highway agencies.
As the audit will cover multiple issues, a series of reports is likely, Debra S. Ritt, assistant inspector general for surface and maritime programs, said in a notice to the railroad administration. No timetable for the reports’ issuance was provided.
U.S. Reps. James Oberstar (D., Minn.) and Corrine Brown (D., Fla.) and U.S. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D., S.C.) cited the July 11-12 newspaper reports in a July 22 letter to Mr. Mead’s office.
The articles, they noted, indicated that many accidents are reported either late or not at all to the railroad administration and the National Response Center of the Department of Homeland Security. Those agencies compile accident data to identify problem areas and direct inquiries.
The reports also found that crossing crash investigations are often conducted in such a manner that evidence is lost or destroyed; in some cases, motorist warning devices believed to be malfunctioning at the time of an accident reportedly were repaired before investigators arrived at a scene.
None of the incidents cited in the articles was in Ohio or southeast Michigan, but Ohio and Michigan continue to rank among the states with the highest accident counts at railroad crossings. The 113 crossing crashes in Ohio last year were fifth-most in the nation, while Michigan’s 99 were the eighth-most, according to a crossing safety report that Mr. Mead’s office released in mid-June.
That report found that the transportation department “came close” to meeting a 1994 Grade Crossing Safety Action Plan goal of cutting annual crossing crashes and deaths in half by the end of 2003. The 2,909 crashes reported last year nationwide represented a 41 percent decline compared with 1993, while the 325 deaths were 48 percent lower than the 626 who died in crossing collisions in 1993.