(The following article by Janet McConnaughey was distributed by the Associated Press on July 6.)
NEW ORLEANS — The next time you’re tempted to beat a train at a crossing, think about what happens if you run over a full soft-drink can.
The train outweighs your car by about as much as your vehicle outweighs that can — it’s 4,000 times heavier.
For the past three years, Louisiana has been among the top five states in the number of accidents at rail crossings and the top 15 for the number of deaths at rail crossings. That’s the case even though 20 states have more people and 22 have more people per square mile of land.
Twenty-two people died at train crossings in 2001, 13 in 2002 and 15 in 2003. That put Louisiana sixth, 13th and fifth among the states, according to the Federal Railroad Administration.
In the first six months of this year, the death total is 19: six pedestrians, seven drivers, four passengers, and two railroad workers. A 20th — a man running from police — died July 1.
There’s no new explanation for this year’s sudden upsurge, just the usual reasons, says the woman who runs Louisiana’s campaign against such accidents.
“Complacency and impatience,” said Betsey Williams Tramonte, state executive director of Operation Lifesaver, a national information program.
Either people don’t bother to watch if a train is coming, or they try to beat it. One man dropped his shirt while running across the tracks and died when he went back to pick it up.
The 15 deaths since the start of May equaled the entire year’s total for 2003.
“It’s an epidemic right now,” Tramonte said.
The accidents in May and early June prompted Tramonte and the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission to push up the start of Louisiana’s summer awareness drive from mid-July to June 21.
At that point, six pedestrians and eight people in cars had died after being hit by trains. Five more died the following weekend: two in a car in Marksville, and a trucker and two train workers in Chalmette.
It’s almost always the driver or pedestrian who’s at fault in such accidents. Railroad tracks are private property, and anyone who walks on them is trespassing. The law requires drivers at crossings to check for trains and yield to them.
“Do not play games. Even if you tie, you lose. Trains do not sneak up on anyone,” Trooper Willie Williams, a Louisiana State Police spokesman, said in May, after trains had killed six people in one week in St. Landry Parish.
The first two train deaths of the year were in January: Michael West, 23, of Rayville, a driver who apparently did not hear a train’s whistle; and James Rhodus, 16, of Kentwood, who tried to run across the tracks before a train got there.
In March, a Bossier City man hit an empty tank car 29 cars behind a freight train’s double engines. His car was dragged nearly three miles and caught fire before some people saw it and called police about 5 a.m. March 25. One caller said the train was on fire; another said a car was being dragged under the train, Bossier City spokesman Mark Natale said.
Two men died in April, one sleeping on tracks in Zachary and another sitting next to the track in Delhi.
Freights don’t have a regular schedule, Tramonte notes. Just because you’ve never seen a train at the Whatever Street crossing at 2 a.m. on a Sunday or 3 p.m. on a Wednesday doesn’t mean one won’t be there today.
In May, the numbers more than doubled: Eight people died.
James Bean, 22, doubled back to get his shirt May 10, Lake Charles police said. A driver died 10 days later in Amite, and a pedestrian on May 23 in Opelousas.
An accident May 24 may have been panic rather than complacency. Eva Dawsey, 72, was driving her husband, Finley Dawsey, 82, in their pickup truck. The crossing arms apparently began to come down while the Dawsey’s truck was still on the tracks, police said, and the pickup apparently stalled on the tracks.
The next day, a Lafayette man tried to cross between cars of a train that had come to a brief stop. On May 27, a Ville Platte woman and her 15-year-old daughter died at a crossing between Lawtelle and Swords.
“You can’t judge the speed of a train when it’s coming toward you. You may think it’s going faster or more slowly than it actually is,” Tramonte said.
A Converse man died June 8 when his small pickup truck was hit on a crossing at a dirt-gravel road in the Sabine Parish town of Noble.
On June 25, trucker Henry Blount, who had just picked up more than 8,000 gallons of gasoline at a nearby refinery, pulled out when the stoplight turned green. He died before the fire was out; the train’s conductor and engineer died of burns later that day.
The next day, a train hit a Ford Mustang in Hessmer, killing Jessie Oxford, 20, of Hessmer, and Jason Gaspard, 16, of Marksville. Gaspard’s brother, James R. Gaspard, 17, of Marksville, was booked with two counts of negligent homicide and one each of negligent injury — a third passenger was injured — and failure to yield at a railroad crossing.
About 3 a.m. July 1, Clarence Lee Moss II was hit by a train. Earlier that night, he hit a security guard with a bottle and ran after being caught breaking into cars at the Isle of Capri casino, Westlake police said.