[Quietcars] Quieter trains a risk to walkers, USA Today, 04/05/10

[Nightingale, Noel]

Quieter trains a risk to walkers

By Larry Copeland

Pedestrian deaths remain steady even as fatalities from train-vehicle 
crashes decline

Anna Marie Stickel, 14, missed the school bus that morning. So she took a 
shortcut along some railroad tracks that made her trek to school about 10 
minutes; going the long, safe way around would have taken 30-40 minutes, her

mother says.

Listening to her iPod as she and a friend walked along the tracks in 
January, Anna Marie of Middle River, Md., was hit and killed by an Amtrak 
train.

Anna Marie's friend, who was not listening to music, heard the train just in

time to jump to safety, says Anna Marie's mother, Tara Stickel, 38. They are

deadly quiet," she says of today's trains and tracks. My baby girl had no 
idea. I know for a fact she hadn't been told how dangerous they are. And I 
am just as much to blame for that. I never saw those tracks as a threat.

Rail-safety advocates and federal authorities are trying to determine how to

reduce fatalities involving trains and pedestrians, which far outstrip 
deaths in train-vehicle collisions.

Over the past 10 years, the number of deaths involving trains and motor 
vehicles has dropped 42% to 248. In the same period, deaths involving 
pedestrians have fallen  6% to 434, the Federal Railroad Administration 
says. That's (incidents with pedestrians) the No. 1 cause of death in the 
railroad industry," FRA spokesman Rob Kulat says.

Rail-safety advocates are especially concerned about teenagers killed 
accidentally by trains in hangout spots on or near the tracks. We are 
working so hard to try to figure out a way to turn this around," says Marmie

Edwards of Operation Lifesaver, an international rail-safety advocacy group.

It may be that in some parts of the country, the railroad tracks are a 
little bit secluded," Edwards says. So (teens) think it's a place where they

can go to just hang out without other people knowing what they're doing. 
Sometimes, when you tell this age group this is not where you should go, 
that's where they're going to want to go

A quiet danger

Trains are a lot quieter than they used to be.

Rails are built in longer, continuous sections of track, so the familiar 
"clackety-clack" of wheels on the track is gone in many places. The trains 
themselves are quieter. Communities across the USA have enacted "quiet 
zones," where operators are barred from sounding their horns during certain 
times of day.

That quiet is one reason the number of pedestrians killed by trains has 
remained steady. Another reason: Many people wear headphones or talk on 
cellphones while ambling along railroad tracks.

When you have train tracks this near high schools or middle schools and 
students use it as a shortcut, you really need to educate children on what's

going on," says Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., who helped set up 
train-safety assemblies at Anna Marie's high school.

People take shortcuts across the tracks. Hunters walk along them. People 
ride all-terrain vehicles on them and sit on them to fish.

Many people simply fail to understand how dangerous trains are, says Richard

Ratcliffe, executive director of Maryland Operation Lifesaver, which puts on

safety lessons for students and others.

We tell them the train overhangs on each side by at least 3 feet, and they 
can overhang by as much as 12," Ratcliffe says. We tell them they don't 
build trains like they did, and they're a lot quieter. We explain why 
walking or walking the dog or hanging out on tracks is so dangerous and why 
it's against the law.

Looking at suicides

It's unclear how many of the deaths are intentional. Kulat says the FRA does

not track suicides but estimates that 20% to 50% of train-pedestrian deaths 
involve people taking their own lives. Railroads reporting a death soon will

have to indicate whether it was a suicide.

Of 33,000 annual suicides in the USA, 1%-2% occur on railroads. Suicide by 
rail is "highly lethal, and it's accessible," says Matthew Wintersteen, 
clinical psychologist at Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University and a 
member of the Pennsylvania Youth Suicide Prevention Initiative. If we can 
restrict access to lethal means, we can reduce the number of suicides. The 
problem, of course, is ... can we restrict public access to the train 
tracks?

Among recent intentional teen deaths:

*Two girls in Delaware killed themselves in February by stepping in front of

a high-speed Amtrak train. The girls had made a suicide pact, according to 
police.

*A high school freshman in Pleasanton, Calif., stepped in front of a Union 
Pacific train near her school in February.

Kulat says a freight train going 60 mph takes about a mile to stop after the

emergency brake is applied. You can't stop. You can't turn, obviously. You 
just have to watch it happen. ... There's the trauma that train engineers go

through (after hitting someone). They go through post-traumatic stress 
counseling. The one thing they talk about is that they see the people's eyes

right before they hit them. A lot of those engineers don't return to work.