By Randy Appleton, Railroad Injury/FELA Attorney

A local television report on a grade crossing crash between a Union Pacific freight train and a tractor-trailer hauling a flatbed in northeastern Arkansas focuses on how the truck driver escaped injury, only spilling his coffee. The video below also makes passing mention of several similar collisions between semis and trains at that particular track-highway intersection, which has no warning lights or gates.

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A newspaper account of the collision at the intersection of U.S. 49 and Greene County Road 805 just north of Paragould, AR, in The (Columbus, IN) Republic, however, tell the fuller story of an injury to the conductor aboard the UP train. The extent of the injuries suffered by the railroad employee are not known, but the accident illustrates many of the risks for injuries and death conductors, engineers and other crew members face as they take their trains through multiple poorly marked and largely uncontrolled grade crossings each day.

First, the truck driver drove his rig into the path of the oncoming train because he had no immediate warning of the impending danger. With no lights or gates in place, the driver could only have seen the approaching train if he had stopped and looked both ways down the track. While he may have done this — reports are unclear — the driver explained that the sun blinded him to the extent that he never saw the train. Trees and brush also obscure part of the rail right-of-way.

Second, once a car or truck is on the tracks, it is often far too late for conductors and engineers to stop and avoid a crash. The semi driver may not have seen the train, but it’s likely that the UP saw the truck. Even so, the crash was all but an inevitability once the truck driver made his vehicle a target.

Last, the tractor-trailer may have sustained the most damage from this crash, but impacts between big rigs and trains are felt quite strongly in locomotives. Any broken bones, head or neck injury, or brain trauma a person might sustain in a traffic accident can be sustained just as easily by a conductor, engineer or train crew member in an accident at a grade crossing.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm whose attorneys have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases.  Attorneys will our firm have served as chairmen of the Railroad section of the American Association for Justice. One of our attorneys wrote a major attorney’s encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach and Hampton, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers also hold licenses to practice in South Carolina (SC), West Virginia (WV), Kentucky (KY), Florida (FL) and Washington, DC, and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. Rick Shapiro and James Lewis were included in the 2011 issue of Best Lawyers in America. They, along with fellow attorney John M. Cooper, were also named 2011 Virginia Super Lawyers for Personal Injury Law, an honor which fewer than 5 percent of outstanding lawyers receive. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, such as Dos and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). We provide free initial confidential injury case consultations, so call us toll free at (800) 752-0042 before giving any statement or talking to a railroad claims agent. Our injury attorneys also host an extensive injury law video library on Youtube. Further, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.