DEADLY
CROSSINGS - Activists want railroads to pay for safety
Cincinnati CityBeat
March 23, 2005
By: Chris
Charlson
When Christy Male of Cincinnati crossed a set of railroad tracks
in Walton, Ky., July 10, 2001, a Norfolk Southern train struck
her car at a speed of 45 miles per hour.
Paramedics airlifted Male from the scene, but she died a short
time later. The McAuley High School and Xavier University graduate
was just shy of her 26th birthday.
An accident occurs at a train crossing in the United States,
on average, every 90 minutes. The crash that killed Male was
one of 3,273 crossing accidents that year.
Male's story is one of several featured in the short film Crossings,
an independent documentary produced by Male's lifelong friends
Emily Jensen and Cynthia Childs. The two took on the project
and formed Bittersweet Productions to showcase the dangers
of railroad crossings and to pay tribute to Male's life.
A 15-minute trailer for the film will be shown April 1 during
a fund-raiser designed to promote awareness and raise additional
money to complete the project.
"I would characterize it as a personal and a human story," Jensen
says. "We're trying to raise people's awareness about rail safety. But
what we've realized as we've researched the problem is that it's an important
safety issue that needs to be addressed. It's kind of trite, but it's a David
and Goliath story and there are people who are putting themselves and their
personal pain out there for other people to see so they can prevent these things
from happening again."
'Really dangerous place'
Because single accidents in rural communities rarely garner
media attention, Jensen says people tend to overlook crossings
as hazards. Many times the general public lays blame on the
driver, she says.
"When you tell people how she died, they assume she was driving around
the gates, they assume she was maybe drinking or they assume she did something
really stupid, because everyone thinks, 'How could you not see a train?' "
Jensen says. "What we want to show people is that none
of those things were true. It was 7 p.m. She worked for the
American Cancer Society, and she was going to visit one of
her volunteers. This was just a really, really dangerous place.
Anyone who lives on that street will tell you that."
Numerous close calls at the crossing where Male was killed
prompted Walton resident Tina Greenlee to write both the railroad
and her congressman. On the evening of the accident she was
one of the last people to see Male alive; Greenlee was the
volunteer Male was going to visit, just past the tracks.
Following Male's death, Greenlee says the city of Walton cut
vegetation away from the track, hung additional signs and painted
a large white "RR"
before the crossing.
"I spoke to the mayor and he said he just wanted to prevent it as best
he could on his end so it wouldn't be repeated," Greenlee says. "Coming
into the neighborhood, it's maintained very well. But going south, you can't
really see because there's a bend in the hill. They'd have to cut out a whole
lot of dirt for that to ever get better."
Only a crossbuck street sign marked the crossing on Locust
Street where Male died. Only 20 percent of the 160,000 crossings
in the United States have warning lights and gates. Responsibility
for maintaining crossings often becomes a contentious subject,
but the bottom line rests on property lines, according to Rudy
Husband, spokesman for Norfolk Southern.
"Warning devices are maintained through the railroad and the vegetation
around the crossing," he says. "It really depends on who owns the
property. For us, there's no dispute. If we own the property, then we maintain
the property and cut the vegetation. In fact, we've undergone an enormous program
of cutting vegetation in and around crossings that's on our property."
'Easy to blame'
Although railroads maintain gates and lights, they don't determine
where and when they get installed. That responsibility goes
to state and federal agencies, which identify hazardous crossings
by using a formula based on vehicle traffic, number of trains,
the speed of the trains and accidents and fatalities.
"Typically what happens after there's been a death, the state will come
in and do another diagnostic survey and they'll say, 'We're going to put gates
in here,' and that's too little too late," says Vickie Moore, co-founder
of the Angels on Track Foundation. "It's almost if they're reactive instead
of proactive. They do everything they're supposed to after somebody dies. But
why didn't they do something (to prevent) these accidents beforehand?"
Moore and her husband Dennis started the organization in 1997
after their son died at an Ohio railroad crossing. Afterward
the state installed gates and lights at the crossing, where
seven other people had also been killed.
Nothing prevents railroads from installing their own safety
equipment at dangerous crossings, but they prefer to wait until
it's mandated, Moore says.
"They choose to sidestep their responsibility because it's too easy to
blame the driver," she says. "Part of the reason they don't want
gates and lights installed is because the maintenance costs are fairly high.
But also, if it can be proven if the gates and lights are malfunctioning, it
falls back on them, so that increases their liability for accidents and deaths.
They're not going to be proactive making any changes to public safety because
they don't consider it their responsibility."
Ultimately Moore would like to see gates and lights installed
at all crossings -- but until people demand change, she fears,
nothing will be done. When accidents occur at crossings, usually
no survivors are left to tell what happened, she says.
"That's why you have people like Emily and Cynthia and the Males, my husband
and I and other families," she says. "It's the families that are
left the truth, and we're not going away. The railroads aren't going to do
anything. The Federal Railroad Administration hasn't done anything. The public
doesn't care about it until it happens to them, but then it's too late."
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