(The following story by Janet Jacobs appeared on the Corsicana Daily Sun website on June 17, 2009.)
CORSICANA, Texas Drivers of 2,000-pound cars put their lives on the line against two 400,000-pound locomotives Tuesday in downtown Corsicana, all in an effort to save about five minutes of travel time.
Watching them in their daring attempts were four police cars, each ready to write tickets and warnings about the practice of dodging trains. The police cars, and the two locomotives were part of an educational program called Crossing Accident Reduction Enforcement, or CARE, sponsored by the Union Pacific Railroad and assisted by the Corsicana Police Department.
A fully-loaded coal-hauling train, which is the typical long train coming through Corsicana weighs 19,800 tons, or about 39,600,000 pounds. With that mass, they dont stop quickly enough to avoid cars.
In early February, the driver of a pickup truck attempted to beat a train, resulting in a major accident at the crossing near Seventh Avenue and Beaton. The driver survived but was transported by air ambulance to Dallas for his injuries. In the second incident, a car dodged around the lowered gates of a railroad crossing near W. 12th Street twice in a row, bringing a train to an emergency stop and bringing east-west traffic to a knotted snarl in downtown Corsicana for more than an hour.
The barriers that raise and lower are called arms, and according to the number of broken arms caused by cars and trucks plowing through the barriers, the intersection at Seventh Avenue and Beaton Street in Corsicana is the most-violated crossing in Texas, said Tom Perry, manager of road operations with Union Pacific.
On Tuesday, while the train went back and forth along that stretch of the railroad, most of the violations were of cars and trucks trying to race through the intersection before the arms were completely lowered.
Corsicana Police Officers wrote 14 citations and two warnings in a two-hour period Tuesday morning, according to Capt. Kenneth Kirkwood.
Last year, 4,520 tickets were written for similar violations in Texas, along with 444 warnings, and 34,577 trespassing tickets, according to statistics provided by Roger Rhoderick with the Union Pacific police department.
The purpose of the exercise, done usually about twice a year through downtown Corsicana, is to educate drivers about the dangers of railroad tracks and locomotives.
Union Pacific has 32,403 grade crossings in Texas. In 2008, 445 collisions were recorded at those crossings, and 46 people were killed, according to railroad records.
In those wrecks, half were at crossings with some kind of warning devices. Also in 2008, 197 pedestrians accidents took place at railroad crossings, of which 77 were fatal.
Its illegal to be within 50 feet of the railroad tracks, except at railroad crossings, Rhoderick said. Its extremely dangerous to be around railroad tracks.
