This Accident occured in an adjacent town in Chesepeake, VIrginia,
This is the Google Street VIew of the interection and the tracks only have the signs, no crossing guards, no lights, nor Claxson to warn of approaching trians…
This is one reason - inconsistent provision of warning devices and barriers - why an old work colleague of mine, and avid train-spotter, has written several letters to both his congressman and senators to eliminate all grade level RR crossings in the U.S.
As far as the incident between the sewer truck and train goes…
Holy s h _ ! 
1st hope the driver makes a full recovery…
Looks like, the plenty of low traffic back road crossings I see, people have to take some responsibility for themselves…
It ends up being a balance between cost and practicality,
actual accident history, and how much safety redundancy is actually needed for that crossing to be safe…
Putting up crossing guards in low traffic areas (like that one looks) is like putting up a traffic light at a low traffic side street, as long as it is not statistically a high crash area… imo
Yesterday, when this was covered by our local news station, they stopped the video just as the train hit the truck and did not show the explosion of the tank and its contents… Last night when I posted this, the exclamation made by the guy recording this was not Bleeped out and he did say those words…
The road that he was traveling on is little more than a one-lane dirt road with a quick right hand turn over the tracks onto the main road…
And this was his view as he approached the turn… That train was traveling pretty fast and as he approached the turn, they train was still a ways away, but he turned so slowly, the train caught up to him… perhaps he was complacent as he had not had to stop for a train previously…
Most people don’t realize that there are over a 1,000 train wrecks every year for many decades now in the USA, or roughly 3 per day… So it is not a matter of if, just a matter of when… People have to pay more attention and not be so complacent…
Does he have any clue of how much that would cost? I suspect, just in my county many billions of dollars. Tracks are about three automobile lengths west of a six lane highway.
Yep, the road either has to go over or under the tracks, since railroad tracks try to stay as level as possible… A 1% grade means the track rises 1 foot for every 100 feet forward, while a 2% grade means it rises 2 feet per 100 feet… Most freight rail lines stay around 1.5% grade or less because trains lose pulling power quickly on steeper grades…
So when roads are separated from tracks with bridges or underpasses, the roads leading up to and away from the crossing have to be redesigned with longer approaches, drainage changes, and more long-term maintenance costs…
Your figures are similar to those reported by The Association of American Railroads (AAR), they are the industry trade group representing the major freight railroads of North America.
However, it is important to note the scale of these incidents:
Severity: Roughly 70% to 80% of these incidents occur at slow speeds inside rail yards or on industrial tracks. They are often minor, such as a single car briefly coming off the track, and usually do not result in major disasters, injuries, or hazardous spills.
Mainline Accidents: Only about 20% to 30% of derailments happen on mainline tracks where trains travel at higher speeds.
A breakdown of the deadliest categories for 2025 is as follows:
1. Highway-Rail Crossing Collisions: 288 fatal incidents
(driving around closed gates, or ignoring Flashing Lights and Claxton's …
2. Trespassing Fatalities: 793 deaths
(not caused by train wrecks or derailments, people walking on the tracks…)
3. Railroad Employee Fatalities: 8 on-duty employee deaths
4. Train Passengers: 2 passenger deaths
I never mentioned derailments, doesn’t have to be a derailment in order to count as a crash/wreck…
Per your post “Highway-Rail Crossing Collisions: 288 fatal incidents, driving around closed gates, or ignoring Flashing Lights and Claxton’s”
That alone is almost 1 per day, not counting the non fatal crashes like the one in the 1st post…
And I was also talking about over decades, not just 1 year…
I would guess that derailments at speed are about the smallest % of all the crashes that happen…
In my neck of the woods, there must be a dozen RR grade crossings without gates and most without warning lights. The only warning is the horn on the engine.
That would involve closing all grade crossings and detouring motorists to an overpass/underpass. No one would agree to that.
It would take decades to construct overpasses/underpasses needed to replace a fraction of those grade crossings. Impractical, your college is a nut.
Closing all grade crossings would be a burden on motorist, they would be rerouted to an overpass/underpass.
And not be so entitled, at RR crossings.
On the track by us, there hasn’t been a train on it in years. Still the school bus stops
Opens it# door to listen and then proceeds. Normally they blow their horn when approaching an intersection. Sometimes just hard to prevent. It is absolutely not feasible to build bridges for the thousands of crossings.
A couple miles out of town the are two crossings about 50 yards apart. One has a caution sign and the other a stop sign. I suppose due to the train traffic. Still a commercial vehicle should be stopping first no matter. Quite a mess though. Who has to do the clean up?
that road is in TERRIBLE shape
People SHOULD be driving relatively slowly on it, imo
It is probably a Private Road that only runs a short distance along the track to service the folks who live or work on those “Back Lots…”
In one direction you wouldn’t see the tunnel til the train emerged, luckily it’s low speed and fairly short. Only active to go from the port to Industrial areas about 12mi total.
The grade level crossings in my area have arms on both sides of the tracks including arms across sidewalks. Now have these centerline barriers in an attempt to prevent people from driving around the arms. I grew up where at most we had flashing lights, often only had crossbucks, my route to school crossed four tracks.
