Trains rarely collide with motor vehicles in Maine.
Data from the Federal Railroad Administration shows that there have been only a few “highway-rail” collisions in Maine each year for the last 10 years.
Until Monday’s accident in North Berwick, no one had died in a highway-rail collision in Maine since 2003. And federal data shows there had been no fatalities involving Amtrak trains at railroad crossings since at least 2001.
“We don’t have as many trains as in other states, nor do we have trains that operate as fast as in some parts of the country,” said Fred Hirsch, Maine’s coordinator for the train safety group Operation Lifesaver Inc.
Experts say Maine has fewer passenger and commuter trains, which tend to go faster than freight trains, than many other states. And the trains in Maine generally don’t go through heavily congested urban areas, as do trains in cities like Boston, New York and Chicago.
Data from the Federal Railroad Administration shows there are 227,000 highway railroad crossings in the United States, 1,666 of them in Maine.
The agency does not have data on the number of crossings in Amtrak’s system because the carrier operates primarily on tracks owned by freight carriers, said spokesman Warren Flatau.
In 2010, there were 2,013 collisions nationwide between vehicles and trains at railroad crossings, causing 262 deaths.
That was down from 2001, when there were 3,237 accidents and 421 deaths. The all-time high for accidents was in 1978, when trains were involved in 13,557 collisions with vehicles.
A fact sheet from the Federal Railroad Administration says more than half of all collisions at railroad crossings happen when the warning systems – the flashing lights and gates – are working properly.
Nearly one-quarter of collisions involve a motor vehicle hitting the side of a train that is crossing the street.
Flatau said impatient drivers sometimes weave around the gates at crossings, and trucks can get hung up on the tracks. Sometimes, a car knocks another onto the tracks.
“The majority of events involve errors in judgment by (automobile) drivers,” he said.
Staff Writer Jonathan Hemmerdinger can be reached at 791-6316 or at: jhemmerdinger@mainetoday.com
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