> Adding information on railroad crossings to mobile apps would “provide road users with additional safety cues and ... reduce the likelihood of crashes,” the NTSB wrote...
I know this is going to sound like victim blaming, but are RR crossings really that hard to see? Surely the apps are not the problem, but maybe from the people racing the train and losing? And I get that some crossings might be hard to see until you're right there, but how is this tech's problem and not an infrastructure problem? IOW, if I wasn't using a maps app with added information, I would be in more danger, so why doesn't infrastructure fix it?
Yeah, this is ridiculous. Watch the damn road. Not everything bad that happens to someone is someone else's fault. You can be the victim of your own actions.
There is no shortage of videos of people in cars pulling in front of visible trains. Drivers stop over rail tracks all of the time. Frequently pedestrians hit by trains, excluding suicides, have earphones in.
Strange article. It assumes that somehow having rail crossings marked on navigation systems would reduce motor vehicle to train accidents, if only the tech companies would implement it.
Do drivers really watch their maps to see upcoming hazards? I just glance once in a while to see how far until my next turn and which direction it will be.
Perhaps it would be nice if I got a small verbal audio cue from whatever navigation app I was using a minute or so before reaching the rail crossing. We already get these notifications when it's time to make a turn and rail crossings aren't so frequent as to make such warnings annoying.
I could certainly imagine that if e.g. Waze warned about railroad crossings that it could prevent some small percentage of almost sleeping drivers/truckers getting hit.
It's a numbers game. 999/1000 will be watching just fine without a warning from their navigation app; that warning might bring awareness to 999.8/1000 or so. Or something like that. That could result in a pretty dramatic decrease of accidents.
This seems like a no-brainer to me - they should add a (visual) warning about this.
I understand the motivation behind the NTSB recommendation, but think I net out siding with the app developers here. The last time I checked, the overwhelming majority of active at-grade rail crossings are well-marked (and usually controlled by lights/gates in populated areas). Adding potentially confusing clutter to apps feels like it may in fact compound the problem if people mistake the tracks for roads/intersections.
Obviously, if apps are routing people down rail tracks, that's a big problem, but it doesn't seem to have been what happened here. Expecting developers to try to solve for every possible dumb human scenario doesn't end well.
Many of these got added to OpenStreetMap at that time. OSMAnd will announce them, the last time (years ago) I used it while driving over some the implementation left a bit to be desired, it announced them about 10 times.
Here's a quick query visualizing just how many there are:
(move the map and click "Run" to look at other areas)
I think the FRA data includes information about what type of control each crossing has. It wouldn't be a huge project to highlight the less controlled crossings that are on higher speed and higher traffic routes.
Do US railway crossings not have clear markings and raisable barriers? I find it hard to have sympathy for people who drive across railway crossing without actually looking at the road while driving a dangerous vehicle like a car.
Some of it is people driving down the railway track. It may be confusing at night (all the incidents I could find mentioned in the bottom happened at night), particularly if there is a road junction immediately following the railway crossing, that you were supposed to turn on. Then an indicator to 'cross the railway, and then turn right' would be nice.
Although, I wonder whether US railway crossings can be hard to see at night.
I've only seen those kinds of gates in Europe. Mind, I have not seen all US railway crossings, but I have seen a few, and none of them had gates like that. Plus, I think there is too little money in the railway network's budget to implement those gates, so asking navigation apps to do it for them is the cheap option.
US rail crossing gates tend to move vertically, and there’s never a barrier that crosses the tracks, only the road. Sometimes, they only block the road in the direction of travel which leaves an easy path for drivers to go around the gates if they’re feeling impatient.
What makes this primarily a US thing though? One would imagine that even if you manage to turn onto a railroad track accidentally, wouldn't driving on it immediately tell you that you left the comparatively smooth road surface?
I am only speculating, but I think in Europe at least, there is a tendency to avoid railway crossings with rails that run parallel to another road. And if that cannot be avoided, the trains are required to run very slowly along those tracks. Part of the problem here is that the trains are unable to stop in time, because these are high speed tracks.
In many places in the US, there are only flashing lights to indicate a train. Where I grew up in the rural midwest, this was very common on county roads routinely with speed limits over 50mph. Even if aggressively starting the flashing lights early, there are just extremely common situations where you’re going 50mph just to keep safe with the flow of traffic and the light flashes at the wrong time and you can’t stop. It could easily result in accidents even for people who are very cautious of train crossings.
In a lot of cases, the lack of an actual automated barrier is just down to budget & maintenance costs. The sparse communities can’t afford to pay to install them or maintain them, and there are too many train crossings that are too spread out rurally for the state to maintain them. If one of them malfunctioned there could be lawsuits, or it could block road traffic on critical county roads where the nearest possible alternate route might be tens of miles away, and the road is needed for school buses, emergencg vehicles, snow removal, etc.
So in total these communities just accept the risk because it’s logistically intractable otherwise.
Compared with the UK where I previously lived, the US has a large number of railway crossings in urban and suburban areas, full stop. So many of these would be a bridge or cutting in the UK. I used to live in a city where the train literally ran down the middle of the road. Secondly the marking is somewhat understated and can look confusingly similar to a regular intersection,
many do not have barriers, and many are adjacent to or run through a road intersection with conventional lights, for added confusion. Finally, the US allows right-turn on red, so it’s normal to pass through a red light and make a turn.
> Funding, however, remained unavailable in Ventura County for the estimated $35 million grade separation project.
That's the key line in that article. Adding it to Google Maps doesn't fix this. Putting up a sign that says "No idiot, don't turn here" doesn't fix this. Better driver training doesn't fix this. Better working time rules (the driver was "severely fatigued") doesn't fix this.
The truck driver is reported to have driven along the tracks having turned too early before the intersection at Fifth Street and then having gotten his wheels jammed in the tracks from which he was then unable to extricate it.
It's a little surprising, since you'd think a truck would be high enough to clear the rails, or that he would immediately realise and try to reverse back into the intersection, but I guess panic set in.
I'm so confused. How on earth is a maps app having railroad crossing markings going to save lives?
A driver needs to stop at a railroad crossing just like they do at a red light or stop sign. If a driver is ignoring any of these, I really don't see how an app is going to help.
Or conversely, if a crossing is somehow not well-marked on the road then that's deep negligence on the part of the transportation department and it needs to be fixed -- it has nothing to do with apps. (All the crossings I know have a closed gate and flashing lights, although I understand this might vary locally.)
b) they have been proven to not having taken action even though "safety advocates" have asked for years.
c) as such they are ripe for some cherry picked court to fine them
There are many many warnings we encounter in daily life which only exist to protect not just the consumer but the manufacturer or service provider from unscrupulous lawyers and political officials who would otherwise exploit the situation.
no snark intended, however we live in a society where someone else is always to blame and usually someone with money which can be taken by penalty or forfeiture in trial or settlement.
I think there is a middle ground. Apps could announce the upcoming railroad crossing just like they do with a left/right turn. Somewhat of a silly example, but if there is a river at the end of a road and your only option is a left or a right, the app will not help stop you for driving the car into the river, but the instruction to go right or left does (albeit accidentally) help you avoid that. I don't see why it won't do the same with rail crossings.
Although you should focus on road signs more than you do the app, there could be a dangerous situation in which the app says "make a left turn at the light", but before reaching the light there is a railroad crossing. Of course you need to stop at that, but the app can enhance the situation but treating it like another instruction. I see no problem here but an overall safety enhancement.
> Apps could announce the upcoming railroad crossing
This can have the potential effect that people expect the apps to always announce a crossing. So when the app fails to announce for whatever reason, people go through the crossing and get hurt.
Ok, but why do that for railroad crossings and not any other type of dangerous crossing? Should we have these apps announce every stop sign, traffic light, and uncontrolled intersection you travel through for safety reasons?
The list is much longer. You're driving past a kindergarten; watch out for children. You're driving past a school. You're approaching an area with many users logged into Google so watch out for pedestrians. You're crossing a bridge. You're passing a point with an unusually large number of accidents in the past.
If that isn't to become some sort of text-to-speech database dump about the area, there has to be a good theory of the conditions for what's worthwhile. And I sense that the natural conditions are the same as the conditions for putting up warning signs, reducing the speed limit, etc.
No, it cannot. They are mandated to have a designed breaking point. If you’re trapped, accelerate and break the barrier. Little damage to the car, relatively little damage to the barrier, everyone’s still alive.
Putting info about railroad crossing into maps is bad, period.
People must be forced to look on the damn road instead of putting everything including speed limits in their navigation system - I would actually outlaw displaying everything that can be seen with your eyes in navigation apps.
Otherwise such stories or "tin can opener bridges" are not ever going to disappear. If you're wondering about the bridge: https://youtu.be/u_9rWH0p43A
There are literally flashing lights and a direction "OVERHEIGHT" blinking, and people are too focused on their navs/phones to notice it.
In all fairness, in Boston/Cambridge, students have been ripping open the top of rental trucks on Storrow and Memorial Drives since long before there were navs/phones. (Admittedly, the warnings didn't used to be as prominent as they are today.)
How often does this happen? Not all 270 railroad crossing deaths are similar to the specific accident mentioned caused by confusing a railroad crossing with a road.
At the same time, there must be billions of railroad crossings by vehicles every year. If map apps do anything to announce/mention railroad crossings, I would expect there to be some number of people that make this mistake because of confusion about the announcement/indication instead of preventing it.
43 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 48.1 ms ] threadI know this is going to sound like victim blaming, but are RR crossings really that hard to see? Surely the apps are not the problem, but maybe from the people racing the train and losing? And I get that some crossings might be hard to see until you're right there, but how is this tech's problem and not an infrastructure problem? IOW, if I wasn't using a maps app with added information, I would be in more danger, so why doesn't infrastructure fix it?
Do drivers really watch their maps to see upcoming hazards? I just glance once in a while to see how far until my next turn and which direction it will be.
It's a numbers game. 999/1000 will be watching just fine without a warning from their navigation app; that warning might bring awareness to 999.8/1000 or so. Or something like that. That could result in a pretty dramatic decrease of accidents.
This seems like a no-brainer to me - they should add a (visual) warning about this.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/Bl...
I'm talking about something that would pop on the Waze display, like 20 seconds ahead of reaching the crossing.
It encourages taking drivers' eyes off the road. Can you offer an argument that its value is such that that's a net improvement?
Obviously, if apps are routing people down rail tracks, that's a big problem, but it doesn't seem to have been what happened here. Expecting developers to try to solve for every possible dumb human scenario doesn't end well.
Here's a quick query visualizing just how many there are:
http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/Ls7
(move the map and click "Run" to look at other areas)
I think the FRA data includes information about what type of control each crossing has. It wouldn't be a huge project to highlight the less controlled crossings that are on higher speed and higher traffic routes.
https://fragis.fra.dot.gov/GISFRASafety/
They have extended information about the crossings.
Although, I wonder whether US railway crossings can be hard to see at night.
Is it really that hard for the railways to fix this problem with better modern automated gates?
(I'm in the US)
Many don't have lights.
In a lot of cases, the lack of an actual automated barrier is just down to budget & maintenance costs. The sparse communities can’t afford to pay to install them or maintain them, and there are too many train crossings that are too spread out rurally for the state to maintain them. If one of them malfunctioned there could be lawsuits, or it could block road traffic on critical county roads where the nearest possible alternate route might be tens of miles away, and the road is needed for school buses, emergencg vehicles, snow removal, etc.
So in total these communities just accept the risk because it’s logistically intractable otherwise.
Apparently a driver drove onto the railroad tracks after confusing them with a road at night.
That's the key line in that article. Adding it to Google Maps doesn't fix this. Putting up a sign that says "No idiot, don't turn here" doesn't fix this. Better driver training doesn't fix this. Better working time rules (the driver was "severely fatigued") doesn't fix this.
Grade separation fixes this.
[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/highway-rail-grade-crossings-typ...
The truck driver is reported to have driven along the tracks having turned too early before the intersection at Fifth Street and then having gotten his wheels jammed in the tracks from which he was then unable to extricate it.
It's a little surprising, since you'd think a truck would be high enough to clear the rails, or that he would immediately realise and try to reverse back into the intersection, but I guess panic set in.
A driver needs to stop at a railroad crossing just like they do at a red light or stop sign. If a driver is ignoring any of these, I really don't see how an app is going to help.
Or conversely, if a crossing is somehow not well-marked on the road then that's deep negligence on the part of the transportation department and it needs to be fixed -- it has nothing to do with apps. (All the crossings I know have a closed gate and flashing lights, although I understand this might vary locally.)
b) they have been proven to not having taken action even though "safety advocates" have asked for years.
c) as such they are ripe for some cherry picked court to fine them
There are many many warnings we encounter in daily life which only exist to protect not just the consumer but the manufacturer or service provider from unscrupulous lawyers and political officials who would otherwise exploit the situation.
no snark intended, however we live in a society where someone else is always to blame and usually someone with money which can be taken by penalty or forfeiture in trial or settlement.
Although you should focus on road signs more than you do the app, there could be a dangerous situation in which the app says "make a left turn at the light", but before reaching the light there is a railroad crossing. Of course you need to stop at that, but the app can enhance the situation but treating it like another instruction. I see no problem here but an overall safety enhancement.
This can have the potential effect that people expect the apps to always announce a crossing. So when the app fails to announce for whatever reason, people go through the crossing and get hurt.
If that isn't to become some sort of text-to-speech database dump about the area, there has to be a good theory of the conditions for what's worthwhile. And I sense that the natural conditions are the same as the conditions for putting up warning signs, reducing the speed limit, etc.
People must be forced to look on the damn road instead of putting everything including speed limits in their navigation system - I would actually outlaw displaying everything that can be seen with your eyes in navigation apps.
Otherwise such stories or "tin can opener bridges" are not ever going to disappear. If you're wondering about the bridge: https://youtu.be/u_9rWH0p43A
There are literally flashing lights and a direction "OVERHEIGHT" blinking, and people are too focused on their navs/phones to notice it.
At the same time, there must be billions of railroad crossings by vehicles every year. If map apps do anything to announce/mention railroad crossings, I would expect there to be some number of people that make this mistake because of confusion about the announcement/indication instead of preventing it.