A Tragic but Avoidable Waste.

Question: What happens eight or nine times a day, kills more than 250 people a year, and injures almost 850 more?

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Answer: trains hitting cars or trucks at railroad crossings. The injuries and deaths are bad enough, but the real tragedy is that every one of those incidents could have been avoided. 

Somewhere in this country. an accident like this occurs several times a day . . . every day . . . day after day. And every one of them is avoidable.

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Spearheaded by the Union Pacific Railroad fifty years ago and with the other railroads quickly joining the effort, Operation Lifesaver was created to promote awareness of the problem of grade crossing deaths and injuries. Their efforts showed results almost immediately.

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In 1980, there were 9,500 grade crossing accidents resulting in 728 fatalities. By the year 2000, the number of accidents had been reduced to about 3500 and the number of fatalities to 425. By 2018, the number of accidents had fallen again—down to 2,217—and there was a corresponding drop in the number of people killed . . . to “only” 262.

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The fact is, however, a year with no grade crossing fatalities is almost certainly unattainable. Drivers are human, they make errors of judgement, and incidents at grade crossings, fatal and otherwise, will no doubt keep occurring. 

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And that’s really too bad because, in addition to the injuries and deaths suffered by people in the vehicles hit by trains at grade crossings, there are other victims of these incidents who are quite blameless: the men and women operating the locomotives. Sadly, many of them pay a heavy price for another person’s recklessness.

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Immediately following one of these tragedies, counseling is provided for the train’s operating crew. Most engineers, knowing they had blown the whistle and braked as much as possible, keep things in perspective and deal with the tragedy successfully. Some, however, have trouble coping and a few, regrettably, are so affected they are unable to get back into a locomotive cab.

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Realistically, it’s not possible to eliminate grade crossing incidents entirely, but a tip of the cap to those who volunteer their time to Operation Lifesaver and continue to take their message to schools and communities all over the country.