>It's the same procedure when a vehicle ends up fouling the tracks off a crossing and potentially damaging the track structure.

In the early 1970s, just after Amtrak took over, a car missed a crossing at Orland on the SP's West Valley and ran into the track. The roadmaster didn't come out to inspect the track (wasn't required practice at the time), so no one told #11 about it. The car had been traveling so fast it knocked the track out of alignment, and when #11 came along (track speed was 60 mph), it derailed. Several of the affected cars were from the early 1950s SP Budd-built Sunset equipment, were taken to Sac, rebuilt, and became part of the SP's business car fleet. I believe they're still around somewhere.

Needless to say, after this, the SP subsequently made inspections by the roadmaster mandatory, even to the point of silliness. I think they eventually became codified into the CFR, most likely because there were several similar occurrences of this sort incident elsewhere in the US over the succeeding years.