Historic Drop in Highway Fatalities

Dear Charles,

Your editorial \”Engineers Will Still Be Needed\” neglected to mention how GM treates it\’s engineers different than the UAW. The salaried folks have had their retirement medical taken away, but not the UAW. Engineering can be outsourced to where the most people (lowest salaries) are. Translation: China and India. Purchasing large subassemblies from low wage countries will mean fewer engineers are needed in the USA, even if final assembly is done in the USA.

What should be done: Change the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations to: (especially when speeds are over 50 MPH)
1) Require that the 3 lights on the lowered arms be brighter. Newer LED technologies can fix this but the FRA regulations will first need to be updated
2) Include a brightness requirement for rail crossing and rail signal lights (for train engineers)
3) Make some lights a flashing strobe type light such as that found on police cars (very inexpensive and compatible with train system voltages.) If this type of light, which alerts a distracted driver from 1/4 -mile away in bright sunlight, even a distracted or text messaging engineer would still see it.
Please change the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) regulations to: (especially when speeds are over 50 MPH)
4) Make it clear that the additional placement of signs and lights is not prohibited and is in fact encouraged.
5) Require additional signs and pavement painting (They are inexpensive)
6) Require additional warning lights at eye level, for multiple-lane crossings.
7) Require warning lights and signs for vehicles in turning lanes.
8) Require a gate to prevent vehicles in turning lanes from turning.
9) Outlaw the practice of making traffic signals flash seconds prior to a train’s arrival. The NTSB has said that it is bad, and it has led to 2 crashes and 3 deaths in Burbank.
10) After a crossing has had several accidents, require extra steps to be implemented, not a business as usual attitude. Burbank had 8 trains strike cars prior to the first death at this one crossing. The count is now 12, two so far last year alone.
11) The new W10-3 sign is not very well recognized by the public and often confused as an intersection sign. The W10-1 with an arrow is superior.
12) The R8-8 (“Do Not Stop On Tracks”) sign should never be substituted for a pictorial sign. One must be much closer to read it than a pictorial sign, it takes longer to read, and many people do not easily read English.
13) Often the only safety device preventing someone from a 79 MPH train is a narrow hard to see 3-inch arm. Surly this can be improved. Please look at the color pictures of crossing gate in Germany. They are substantial, highly visible, and have a chain link fence that hangs from them to the pavement. There are also two on each side of the tracks, effectively sealing the crossing so not even a dog or child can get by. Some have been tested that can stop a 4,000 pound car at city speeds.
14) The quaint cross-buck sign in its present form must go. It is gray, blending in with the smoggy or cloudy skies, it is placed up too high to reflect headlights. German cross-buck signs are a bright reflective white with red tips. They get ones attention, the red signaling “danger” They are placed lower. Ohio has also developed a Ohio Buckeye cross-buck replacement.
On September 17th, I co-authored a Los Angeles Opinion editorial titled,
Rail safety's human error excuse
By Najmedin Meshkati and James Osborn