Chris Walker Wrote:
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> Beats me how all that Whistle blowing you lot do
> at a crossing is all for naught.
>
>
> Chris
> in New Zealand

Back on earth, where this kind of thing is all too common, and has nothing to do with reading skills, or a lack thereof.

One factor is often seen in low use crossings, which often have a much higher fatality rates per motorists crossing the tracks, than much higher use grade crossings. With no one watching, some folks seem to be more likely to run the crossings with signals operating or evn gates down. Folks seem less likely to run gates when other folks are waiting with them and would see them ding it (but some still will, of course).

One of the worst accidents we ever had on the LA Division during my time was on a "low use" grade crossing in El Monte just past the I-10 eastbound, where there was a low traffic two lane crossing, protected with gates. One day, the only car at the crossing was a mom who was taking the whole station wagon full of kids to school who decided not to wait. So, blowing the whistle is better than nothing, when there is nothing else you can do but watch in horror from the cab at people being really stupid.

Flashing red signals and adjacent traffic signals can confuse drunks and they don't stop. Which is why we ended up having such a huge decrease in fatalities on the LA Metro Blue Line, after we interconnected the adjacent traffic signals to go full red like a regular stop light. It seems that those under the influence of alcohol are fare more likely to stop at a full red traffic signal than a flashing red traffic signal. In the first ten years of the Blue Line there were well over 90 fatalities, many from grade crossing accidents, and the average blood alcohol level was nearly 3 times the legal limit at the time of death (and some of those averaged in weren't drunk).

Like with bike fatalities (40% legally under the influence of alcohol at the time of death), or pedestrian fatalities (up to 49% in one study were legally under the influence of alcohol at the time of death), rail crossing fatalities seem to have a lot of alcohol related fatalities, as well.