Granted: if she had waited until the gate went up, she wouldn't have been killed. But for peet sake - she was only six years old - what do you expect!

Besides, if she could have seen or heard the damn train, it is highly unlikely that even a six year old would have started across. And the only reason she could not see the train was because of that stupid sound wall - period!

After forty years in this industry, I can tell you this much about grade crossing safety: All accidents (no exception) are the result of a whole chain of events, not just one singular stupidity. If any one of those events doesn't happen, the accident doesn't happen. Usually, they don't all happen at once, which often leads to complacency and breaking a rule "just this time". But when they all happen together - BOOM!

You succeed at preventing accidents only by acting to break as many links in that chain as possible; because at any time, like it or not, believe it or not, somebody or something will screw up. But even if there is a screw up, and the chain of events is still proactively broken somewhere else; there still will be no accident.

But at this particular crossing, the most important prevention of all - being able to see trains coming - is all botched up big time. An accident here was absolutely CERTAIN - in a matter of hours or days. In fact, this death was flatly predicted well over a year ago - By me. I just didn't know the name of the first victim. It was not a surprise to anyone - except maybe myopic politicians. Virtually any signal engineer seeing that grade crossing would have come to the same conclusion as I did. It is just too bad that the city was adamant that it stay that way

It seems you are expecting a mere six year old inexperienced child to be able to make up for "CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE" on the part of those city officials. That is something many adults couldn't even do - are they to be condemned to death for lack of expertise in recognizing a hazardous conditions. I don't think so.

That's why experts are usually hired (and heeded) - to make sure that accidents can be prevented in as many ways as practical - by the average not so expert public. And yes, it literally IS criminal negligence, when industry standard practices are so flagrantly ignored, and it results in death of a human being. Any one of those experts I speak of, being so negligent, would soon find his address changed to some place like Leavenworth Kansas.

Bottom line: Cities should not be allowed to interfere in any way with the proper design of railways - period!

OPB