Route 126 Crackdown Snags More than Railroad Criss-Crossers

Last Wednesday was a bad day to be breaking the law on Route 126 in Plainfield.

The and the Canadian National Railway police celebrated last week’s Train Safety Awareness Week by slapping eight drivers with as much as $750 in fines and court costs for stopping within railroad grade crossings.

But, when cops staked out to derail drivers dissing train signals, they nabbed more than just crossing violators. One driver was caught with marijuana, three had no auto insurance, one was driving on a revoked license and another got a ticket for failing to wear a seat belt.

Still, the numbers show Plainfield drivers might be wising up when it comes to train traffic laws. Last week's crossing crackdown netted only about a quarter of the drivers ticketed in a That time, police cited about 30 individuals for stopping too close to the tracks.

The dual crossing dragnets are designed to get drivers prepared for an expected doubling of train traffic rolling through Plainfield’s 17 crossings over the next year.

Motorists convicted of stopping on the railroad tracks might lose their driver’s license for a month for the first offense, and three months the second time. But it’s not good enough just to stop when the crossing gates close. It’s important to make sure your car does not roll past white lines marking the grade crossings, police warn.

“All trains overhang the rails by three feet on each side, and wide dimensional loads on trains can overhang the rails by up to five feet on each side,” Plainfield Traffic Officer Eric Munson said in a press release. “When vehicles illegally stop within the highway-rail grade crossing, the protective gate arm will lower itself onto the vehicle."

When it comes to mix-ups between automobiles and trains, odds favor the locomotive. While most of us think that train-auto crashes are rare, the truth is that a driver is more than 40 times more likely to collide with a train than another automobile, according to figures from the Plainfield Police Department.

It takes the average 110-ton train more than a mile—think 20 football fields—to stop. And the train doesn’t have to be barreling down the tracks at full speed to hit a car at a crossing. Most train-car crashes happen when trains are going no more than 30 mph, the statistics show.

Traffic safety experts advise drivers and pedestrians to lose the ear phones when nearing railroad tracks. Bicyclists should get off and walk their bikes across the crossing, they say.