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

[Deborah Kent Stein]

Very troubling.  Do we want to link this to our site?  It takes our concerns 
in a new direction, but it's certainly related to the work we've been doing.

Debbie


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nightingale, Noel" <Noel.Nightingale at ed.gov>
To: <quietcars at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 10:30 AM
Subject: [Quietcars] Quieter trains a risk to walkers, USA Today, 04/05/10


>
> 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.
>
>
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