(The following report by Tom Shaw appeared on the Omaha World-Herald website on November 6.)
OMAHA, Neb. — The sight of freight trains rumbling down the tracks is about as common in Nebraska and Iowa as corn and silos.
But transportation officials are urging drivers to be careful at railroad crossings as figures this year show an increase in train-vehicle accidents and fatalities in the two states compared to 2006. Nationally, such accidents have decreased.
“They’re so easy to result in a fatality because a train and a car don’t mix very well,” said Fred Zwonechek, administrator of the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety.
From January through August — the latest figures available — there were 12 fatalities in Nebraska and Iowa at railroad crossings, compared with six deaths during the same period last year. In fact, there were 11 fatalities in the two states during all of 2006.
Before this year, the number of accidents for the first eight months and for the full year had been on the decline in Nebraska and Iowa.
Still, Zwonechek said that with such small sets of numbers, it’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions about any upward swing in the figures. Accident numbers can fluctuate with factors such as how many people were in a vehicle at the time of a train collision.
“When you consider the number of crossings we have and the number of trains, it’s a pretty small number,” he said of Nebraska’s fatalities.
One of this year’s fatalities was in Pottawattamie County. A 33-year-old Council Bluffs man struck a stationary train at a crossing in May with his car. The accident happened in the 1200 block of South 17th Street in Council Bluffs. Overall there were five accidents in the county during the first eight months of the year.
A fatal accident Sunday in western Douglas County did not involve a railroad crossing and won’t be counted in year-end figures. A 22-year old man’s truck left a roadway and ended up on railroad tracks. Authorities have said he may have been dead before a freight train struck the vehicle.
Nebraska’s railroad crossing accidents have mainly been along the key rail routes through the central section of the state. About half of the Iowa crossing accidents this year have been in areas with major train routes in the eastern and western parts of the state. Peggy Baer, director of the Iowa Office of Rail Transportation, said the reason for this year’s increase in accidents and fatalities is unclear.
She said that in most cases driver behavior is the cause. People aren’t aware of their surroundings or they are trying to make it through a crossing before a train arrives.
“The train can’t veer off the track, and it takes a long time to stop,” Baer said. “We like to emphasize that the driver should be aware of the crossing and know there’s a track there and there may be a train.”
Iowa has nearly 4,500 at-grade railroad crossings where public roads intersect with rail lines. A figure for Iowa private road crossings wasn’t available.
Nebraska has 3,465 at-grade public railroad crossings and about 3,090 crossings on private roads, according to the Nebraska Department of Roads.
More than half the public crossings in Iowa are marked only by a sign letting drivers know that a railroad crossing is ahead.
Since the beginning of 2006, almost half of the injuries and fatalities in Iowa and Nebraska have come at sign-only intersections. Those X-shaped signs are the minimum that’s required at public railroad crossings. The site of the Pottawattamie County fatal accident in May had only a railroad crossing sign.
State and local agencies work with railroad companies to determine whether crossings also need features such as flashing lights or crossing gates.
Federal money is available to help pay for improvements and is allocated based on federal measurements of which crossings are most in need of upgrades. Train and vehicle traffic and speeds are factored into those decisions.
In addition, a few years ago the Federal Railroad Administration began ordering railroads to place reflective stripes on the sides of locomotives and freight cars to increase their visibility in dimly lit areas.
Dale Bray, director of public safety for Union Pacific Railroad, said the company has a number of public education and outreach programs. A national program called Operation Lifesaver offers brochures and presentations on crossing safety, as well.
Omaha-based Union Pacific, which covers the western two-thirds of the country, works with local and state officials on crossing and road improvements, Bray said.
“The railroads and the citizens in the community all share a responsibility to be safe,” he said.
“These days we have so many distractions — cell phones, iPods, GPS devices — and we’ve become impatient and more risk-takers,” Bray added. “These trains can’t stop, and when (drivers) approach a crossing they need to stop, look, listen and live.”