![]() The safety improvements in nearly every aspect of highway-rail crossings are clear, with the exception of pedestrians at crossings, which not only hasn’t seen the same benefit, but has actually trended toward higher numbers.” “This increase in fatal pedestrian incidents is quite surprising. “While safety overall has dramatically improved over the past 30 years, the one area which has not seen the same improvement is pedestrian safety at crossings,” says a 2019 report from the U.S. Pedestrian deaths are expected to surpass the number of fatal accidents involving vehicles at rail crossings, which itself remains a stubborn safety problem despite improvements in recent decades. And it’s up to pedestrians to be more careful near the rails.īut research at the federal level indicates that regulators don’t have a handle on why pedestrians are getting killed at railroad crossings. So it’s up to regulators and researchers to work out how to better keep people off the tracks. They’re on a fixed path and can’t stop on a dime, even if NJ Transit trains are much more agile than a freighter lugging hundreds of cars. There’s not much the trains themselves can do. NJ Transit already uses pedestrian gates, together with flashing lights and clanging bells at many of its more than 300 crossings to warn both pedestrians and drivers of approaching trains. The need for innovative solutions is clear. Xiang Liu, the lead researcher on the project, said this week his team has not started its study yet, but they expect to begin sometime this year. The grant will allow Rutgers’ Center for Advanced Infrastructure and Transportation to collect data for nine months to better understand the frequency, demographics and causes of people getting walking across the tracks when they’re not supposed to, Ali Maher, director of the center, said in a statement in December. The pair announced a grant of $357,000 in December to analyze the problem and test artificial intelligence equipment. In an effort to better address the problem in New Jersey, NJ Transit has teamed up with Rutgers University to study technology that can detect pedestrians, and in theory, increase safety around railroad crossings. We’re at a little bit of a loss at how to deal with pedestrians.” “I think we’ve worked out how to stop cars from getting hit (by trains). “I think pedestrians at crossings are a big deal,” said Ian Savage, a rail safety expert at Northwestern University. In fact, pedestrians account for more than one-third of all deaths at railroad crossings in the United States. ![]() Rail safety experts and transit agencies across the country have been perplexed as they’ve watched a spike of pedestrians hit and killed at railroad crossings. NJ Transit isn’t the only agency struggling with increased pedestrian casualties at crossings.
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