The Cops at the Crossing...
Tuesday, September 26, 2017
OPERATION CLEAR TRACK was implemented at 10am Eastern Time this morning. This is the largest coordinated law enforcement operation in the history of the railroads. For three hours at over a dozen locations around New Jersey Teams of Law Enforcement Officers will sitting at railroad crossings watching for violations then writing tickets and issuing warnings for the violations they do see. Some of these crossings are manned by local police departments, others by New Jersey Transit and railroad police. They will also be handing out safety literature to vehicles that are stopped at the crossings. Nationally there will be over 250 crossings manned by officers representing over 200 different agencies.
The violations being watched for are motorist disregard of the signs or signals, going around gates, and stopping on the track even if no train is present. They will also be watching for pedestrian violations – crossing in front of a train, ducking under the gates or walking along the track as though it’s a sidewalk.
Roughly every three hours, somewhere in the United States a pedestrian or a vehicle is hit by a train. This means that during the three hours of Operation Clear Track somebody is going to be hit by a train. Almost invariably this is because the driver did something they should not have done, such as ignore the sign, or the pedestrian was where they should not have been.
The goal of Operation Clear Track is to educate. The real cost of the violation is not the fine which might be imposed. The real cost is that the violation can be fatal.
National Rail Safety Week, Sept 24 -30, 2017 https://oli.org/about-us/news/rail-safety-week-2017
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