A thirty-five-year-old man died after a train struck his jeep. He was traveling south on St. Paul Avenue in Pass Christian, and the train was traveling west. The gravely wounded man was taken to the hospital, where he died from the blunt force trauma that he experienced in the collision. There were no other injuries or fatalities as the result of this wreck.
While reports about the fatal crash did not specify whether the accident occurred at a railroad crossing, drivers must understand how dangerous and deadly accidents at railroad crossings are and how frequently they happen. A person who is in a passenger vehicle that hits or is hit by a train is forty times more likely to die than they would be if the other vehicle involved in the crash were a passenger vehicle.
Nearly six thousand collisions involving a train and one or more motor vehicles occur in America each year. Many of those crashes occur at railroad crossings, while some of the wrecks occur in other types of locations that are not railroad crossings.
When you add the number of car-train wrecks to the number of train- pedestrian accidents, statistics show that in the United States, one vehicle or person is hit by a train approximately every two hours. That’s an estimated twelve train-related collisions every day. What’s more, the frequency of train crashes has been increasing since 1997.
Railroad crossings are dangerous places. Some intersections do not have any safety devices to warn motorists of an oncoming train. Some have safety devices that don’t work correctly. It is estimated that eighty percent of America’s more than two hundred thousand railroad crossings have inadequate safety devices. Over half of all train accidents happen at these unprotected crossings. Drivers must pay close attention to what’s happening around any railroad crossing they encounter and make wise decisions about when to proceed through the crossing.
Accidents at railroad crossings often look different during the day than they do at night. At night, half of all vehicle-train collisions occur when a driver of a passenger vehicle runs into the side of the train as the train is passing through the crossing. During the day, three-quarters of the collisions that happen at railroad crossings result from a train hitting a passenger vehicle.
While many things can cause a train crash, some of the most common causes of train accidents are recklessness, human error, and negligence. Reckless actions by drivers or pedestrians such as walking on train tracks or trying to speed through a crossing before the train cause some train accidents. Human error by the train conductor or signal operator can cause a wreck. Negligence by the railroad, an equipment manufacturer, or a government agency can also result in conditions that cause a collision.
If you were hurt or if someone in your family was killed in a motor vehicle- train crash, call the Mississippi Automobile Accident Attorneys of Barrett Law PLLC at 1 (800) 707-9577 to arrange an initial consultation.