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How’s This for a Big Moving Safety Message?

I’ve written before about collisions between trains and cars or trucks at grade crossings, and about individuals hit and almost invariably killed while walking on tracks. It’s still a very big problem.

For a variety of reasons – some understood, some not – a disproportionate number of these incidents occur on Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner route, particularly the stretch between Los Angeles and San Diego. One retired engineer recalls hitting and killing a surfer years ago. The kid was walking down the middle of the track carrying a surfboard and listening to a walkman. He had his back to the oncoming train and never knew what hit him.

Just two months ago a young woman in a Seattle suburb was hit and killed while walking on the tracks. She was talking on a cell phone.

The sad fact is, these kinds of “accidents” are still happening … almost on a daily basis. To create more awareness of the problem, one of the Surfliner locomotives has recently been decked out in a bright new paint job. Let’s hope it helps get the message out there.

3 Comments

  1. Thanks for the additional information. I have mentioned Prop 1A a couple of times, and will certainly write about progress in the months ahead. As I’m sure you realize, the passing of that initiative has huge implications, and not just for your state. Good on ya, Californians!

  2. We have a high population with the track unfenced in many area with the ocean beaches as an attraction on one side. Do you think that the public can be educated to be safer? After 30 years of education and enforcement the public mostly complies with the auto seat belt law.

    Two days ago, California passed proposition 1A for high speed rail. The high speed rail line will be fenced and for the most part will not be along the coast. In many urban areas, the high speed rail line will be in a concrete canyon with road and pedestrian bridges over it. Not so scenic for the train passengers, but much safer.

    Maybe you will mention the Calif high speed rail project in your blog.

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