Yeah, the red gyralights gave you a chance to stop....and, I did that several times in my career, including once when the adjacent track, which I was on, was in fact fouled by a derailment.

I never understood how we let the Canadian's con us into "ditch lights"....as a replacement...?

My worst fears as a hoghead were about hitting cars and trucks at urban and rural crossings, not hitting "unseen" low lying boulders, hiding in ditches, in the Canadian Rockies.

I always had the "gut" feeling that the gyralight/mars light was much better for that. I've never seen any scientific "analysis", professional paper, or other finding that the "ditch light" are better for warning pedestrians or vehicles, or are even slightly associated, in the dim recesses of their minds, with an train approaching.....

It seems replacing gyralight/mars lights was just one of those regulations, that just kind of happened, without any real studies of public perceptions, or comparative effectiveness as a warning at grade crossings.......