By Rick Shapiro, Railroad Crossing Train Crash Attorney

An Amtrak engineer and conductor, a tractor-trailer driver and seven train passengers suffered injuries requiring hospital treatment when their train and truck collided in Michigan (MI) on February 1, 2012. According to the Detroit News, the passenger train making its way from Detroit to Chicago was traveling at 79 mph when it struck the semi that was stuck on the rails. An Amtrak spokesperson told the newspaper the gates and other warning systems along the Norfolk Southern-owned tracks were functioning at the tie of the wreck.

None of the reported injuries were life-threatening. Two of the Amtrak rail cars derailed and significant damage was done to nearby structures.

View more videos at: http://nbcchicago.com.

This collision at an at-grade rail crossing in Leoni Township came as news circulated that the passenger railroad and other rail companies are fighting federal rules requiring the installation of crash-avoidance technology known as positive train control. PTC allows dispatchers and route managers with emergency information about track and weather condition to remotely slow or stop trains before accidents occur.

My Virginia personal injury lawyer colleagues and I have urged railroads to adhere to existing Federal Railroad Administration mandates for deploying PTC technology on all trains and tracks by 2015, but legislation pending in the U.S. Congress would push that deadline back to 2020 — just in time for the billion-dollar corporations to seek another extension.

Amtrak, BNSF, CSX, NS and other rail companies claim installing PTC would be too expensive. These same corporations are expected to spend an estimated $13 billion on adding and upgrading tracks, rail yards and rolling stock during 2012. Those expenditures appear to be almost entirely aimed at increasing the railroads’ ever-growing record profits rather than increasing safety for rail employees and passengers.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Randy Appleton, Attorney Representing Railroad Employees in FELA Cases

A 57-year-old welder for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Company died after being struck by and pulled under a rail grinder in a rail yard in Amarillo, Texas (TX). A BNSF spokesman told reporters the fatal January 9, 2011, on-the-job accident appears to have resulted from “some kind of miscommunication” while the rail maintenance car was being moved from one track to another so it could be repaired.

I find that statement particularly interesting because my Virginia Beach, VA-based FELA lawyer colleague Rick Shapiro recently noted  that a 3-train collision in Indiana (IN) which left two of six crew members seriously injured also seemingly resulted from a breakdown in communications. The federal Safety Appliance Act requires railroad corporations to supply employees with the equipment and training needed to ensure all workers in danger of being injured or killed stay informed of where hazards exist and how those hazards can be avoided or mitigated.

Full and proper communication can only occur when the people who must share information have the tools to do so, the understanding of when and how to communicate essential facts, and the knowledge to interpret and act on the data they receive. BNSF may be initially pointing to “miscommunication” as a means of laying the groundwork for a defense against a Federal Employers’ Liability Act or SAA lawsuit, but it and other railroads have high duties to make sure their worker can and do communicate while performing dangerous tasks.

Investigators from the Federal Railroad Administration and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have begun looking into the causes of the deadly accident in BNSF’s Amarillo yard. Regardless of the agencies’ findings, something obviously went as wrong as it could and a man lost his life in a way that could almost definitely be prevented. When the problems with equipment or work procedures are eventually identified, BNSF and all other similarly situated rail operators must make changes aimed at ensuring such fatal accidents do not recur.

EJL

About the Editors: The Virginia- and Carolina-based attorneys at Shapiro, Lewis & Appleton have long histories of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases and of helping victims of rail crossing accidents. Lawyers at our firm have served as chairmen of the railroad section of the American Association for Justice, the largest national victim’s injury attorney organization, and one of our attorneys wrote a major legal encyclopedia section on railroad safety litigation. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Be sure to get your free reports about railroad injury, disease and wrongful death FELA cases: The Do’s and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — Yours FELA Rights and What Railroad Claim Agents Won’t Tell You (But You Must Know). Also, our railroad injury lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By John Cooper, FELA Attorney in Virginia

As a Virginia-based attorney who specializes in representing railroad employees who get injured on the job and helping rail workers’ families recover fair compensation when a loved one loses his or her life due to a rail company’s negligence, I make it my business to stay up to date on accidents in rail yards, on tracks and aboard trains. Still, I was taken aback by the first line of an e-mail I just received from a fellow layer who handles personal injury and wrongful deaths cases brought under the provisions of the Federal Employers Liability Act, or FELA.

Here’s that shocking sentence: “During the first six months of 2011, 37 serious injuries occurred during switching operations, resulting in three fatalities and eight amputations, while over the past two years, five rail workers have died in accidents involving rolling rail equipment.”

What this means is far too many lives have been shattered and ended by accidents in which rail workers have been struck by or crushed between rail cars and locomotives that have rolled back into each other or collided. Those dangers are ever-present for the engineers, conductors, switchmen and trackmen who must go between rolling stock to connect car and engines.

Organizations representing railroad employees such as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the United Transportation Union have long recognized the safety risks and have worked with the Federal Railroad Administration since the early 1990s to reduce the number of rollback and crush injuries and deaths. Now, the FRA has issued a 2011-2012 Safety Advisory about how rail employees can protect themselves while working between cars and locomotives.

As published in the October 11, 2011, Federal Register, the advisory urges workers and railroad corporations to

• Review current operating and safety rules that specifically address both remote control locomotive and conventional switching operations that require employees to go between rolling equipment, and determine whether those rules provide adequate protection to employees or need to be updated or revised.
• Develop, implement, and monitor sound communication protocols that require employees on multiperson switch crews to notify their fellow crewmembers when the need arises to enter between two pieces of rolling equipment — regardless of whether the employee is the primary RCO [remote control operator] or working on a conventional crew.
• Review the Switching Operations Fatality Analysis (SOFA) Safety Recommendation 1, Adjusting Knuckles, Adjusting Drawbars, and Installing End of Train Devices [please follow the link] and communicate its procedures implementing that recommendation to employees working in yards or other locations where the possibility of entering between rolling equipment exists.
• Convey to employees that their own personal safety is their responsibility and that railroad management supports and encourages those employees that make safety their number one priority, regardless of their immediate assignment.
• Convey to employees that they should encourage fellow employees to perform their tasks safely and in compliance with established railroad rules and procedures.

The recommendations and reminders from FRA apply equally to Amtrak, BNSF, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Union Pacific and all other long- and short-haul passenger and freight railroads. And while the advice for workers to take responsibility for their own on-the-job safety is apt, the rail companies truly do bear the ultimate responsibility for developing and enforcing procedures and practices that put employees at the least risk for suffering injuries or getting killed.

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.

By John Cooper, Virginia FELA Plaintiff’s Attorney

In a July 20, 2011, conference call, top CSX officials reported record profits while glossing over the deaths of three company employees and injuries to dozens of other rail workers during the second fiscal quarter of its fiscal year.

Within two minutes, CSX Chairman, President and CEO Michael J. Ward announced, “Operating income [profit on more than $3 billion in revenue] was up 21 percent to a record $926 million.” Well after that, David A. Brown, CSX’s chief operating officer, noted, “We were deeply saddened by the loss of three employees.” A slide shown while Brown was speaking indicated that CSX had a personal injury rate of 0.89 and a train accident rate of 2.37.

Brown did not explain what those rates meant, but the Federal Railroad Administration typically records injuries and accidents as a percentage of incidents per million miles traveled. FRA data show that, in real numbers, CSX saw 80 train accidents through June 15 in 2011. The most serious of those occurred in Union City, North (NC), on May 24. A locomotive engineer and a conductor died when two freight trains collided. Two other train crew members suffered injuries.

Another CSX worker lost his life in a Waycross, Georgia (GA), rail yard on April 29. One of the company’s rail cars turned over onto the man’s pickup truck.

CSX has some justification for pointing to quarter-to-quarter decreases and a general downward trend in on-the-job injuries for it rail workers, but the corporate executives’ performance in the most recent call to investors shows that they prize profits over protection of workers. This attitude appears to be shared across the railroad injury. Safety is claimed as a core mission and value, but spending on preventing accidents and limiting exposures to toxic substances always seems to take a back seat to using money taken in to take in more money.

Working in Virginia Beach, VA, as a FELA attorney — minutes from rail terminals in Norfolk and Newport News that receive and discharge dozens of Norfolk Southern and CSX trains each week — I know rail employees will never face zero risks to life and limb. But I would welcome a presentation to railroad investors in which a rail company stated it had taken significant charges against quarterly or yearly profits specifically to upgrade its safety equipment and procedures.

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.

By Richard N. Shapiro, Railroad Accident Injury Attorney

Union Pacific officials are calling a fatal derailment in Wrightsville, Arkansas (AR), on March 20, 2011, a “rare situation.” I’m sure that eases the minds of the victim’s friends and family members and assures everyone who drives, rides or walks through the crossing where the accident occurred that they should have no future safety concerns.

Robert Graham was stopped near the crossbucks and lights marking the intersection of UP tracks and a rural highway when a train car jumped the rails, tipped over and landed on his car. Graham was pronounced dead at the scene. No train crew members suffered injuries in the derailment.

The railroad resumed operations along the tracks within 12 hours, even as its spokespeople estimated that determining the cause of the derailing could take months.

Railroad crossings on the same level as roads — called grade crossings in the rail industry — present significant risks to people in cars and trucks, as well as to pedestrians and bicyclists. Each year, thousands of Americans lose their lives or get injured at grade crossings. Private  crossings that lack gates and often have sightlines obstructed by trees, brush and buildings are particularly deadly.

A derailment may be less common than a collision at a grade crossing, but the result was no less tragic. As a railroad injury attorney living, driving and practicing in a region criss-crossed with dozens of Amtrak, CSX and  Norfolk Southern crossings intersecting rural roads and city streets alike, I’ve seen my share of near-misses and terrible accidents.

When Union Pacific and crash investigators from the Federal Railroad Administration determine what caused the accident in Arkansas, all rail operators should pay attention to the findings and take any necessary actions to improve the safety of their own grade crossings. Making crossings safer will protect members of the public and rail workers. Failing to make crossings less prone to being the site of accidents that cause injuries and death will leave rail operators subject to personal injury, wrongful death and FELA claims. Investing in crossing upgrades should just make financial sense for railroads if nothing else.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including 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. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Richard N. Shapiro, Railroad Injury Attorney

Under new rules announced by the Federal Railroad Administration on March 3, 2011, drivers and pedestrians will be able to quickly alert rail companies about problems such as broken gates, uneven pavement, blocked sightlines and vehicles stalled on tracks. Every crossing will have a sign posted with the crossing’s ID number and a toll-free telephone number to call. This, FRA explained, will permit companies to notify train engineers, conductors and trackmen about hazards.

Amtrak, CSX and Norfolk Southern are already required to have systems in place for gathering and disseminating warnings about unsafe rail crossings. The new rules, set to take effect this May, all train operators such as the Eastern Shore Railroad must have signs at highway grade crossings and at paths where people on foot or riding bicycles can cross tracks. FRA estimates “the proposed rule would affect 211,401 highway-rail and pathway grade crossings and 594 railroads.”

Federal regulators have been pushing rail companies to act to prevent accidents at crossings since passage of the Rail Safety Improvement Act in 2008. Those efforts are more than needed. Each year, about 9,000 accidents occur at crossings. A majority result in injuries, and hundreds cause deaths. A local reminder of how deadly wrecks involving passenger vehicles and trains came with news that a man driving a pickup truck in New Kent County, Virginia (VA) was killed when an Amtrak commuter train hit him. The private crossing had no gates.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern U.S. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including Dos and Don’ts When Injured at a Railroad — The Railroad Worker’s 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. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By John Cooper, Railroad Injury Attorney

My colleague, Richard Shapiro, recently wrote about how Norfolk Southern (NS) public relations folks claim sincerity and concern when it comes to employee safety. That doesn’t seem to be the case, however.  Find out more about how molten sulfur being carried in a NS rail car in Roanoke, Virginia (VA), badly injured three workers.

Check out these other articles on FELA and railroad injury cases:

• FELA Statute of Limitations
• Impact of Safety Appliance Act Regulations on Railroad Worker Injury Cases

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including 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. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By John Cooper, Railroad Injury and FELA Attorney

A 24-year-old CSX conductor and Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans lies in critical condition in a Roanoke, Virginia (VA) hospital nearly a week after he plunged about 50 feet from a railroad trestle into the near-freezing Jackson River in the town of Covington. The man was working in a paper mill switching yard hooking up rail cars when he fell from the bridge. He had just returned from an involuntary layoff and relied on his job with the railroad to support his two young children.

The injured conductor’s life was saved by a switchman who waded into the river to rescue him. The co-worker suffered hypothermia.

The cause of the almost fatal accident has not been announced, but both the Federal Railroad Administration and CSX have opened investigations. Whatever the specific findings, one inescapable conclusion will be that working in rail yards puts rail employees’ lives at risk. Conductors, who frequently mount and dismount cars and locomotives, are particularly prone to being struck by those trains or suffering falls that result in severe injuries and deaths. As attorneys who have represented railroad workers in FELA lawsuits against rail operators such as Amtrak, CSX and Norfolk Southern, my colleagues and I have seen this often.

I wish the injured conductor a full and speedy recovery. I also hope that if the accident investigations uncover any equipment failures or procedural lapses that led to the conductor’s fall, that CSX and regulators act quickly to correct the problems and to prevent them for recurring.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including 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. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By Richard N. Shapiro, Railroad Injury and FELA Attorney

Passage of the Rail Safety Improvement Act in 2008 marked a milestone in federal railroad legislation, and not just because it was the first piece of meaningful rail employee protection legislation to make it out of Congress in a quarter century. The RSIA also marked a shift in safety efforts by focusing on factors that contribute to injuries and death such as employee fatigue and by calling on regulators and rail operators to identify and implement plans to make working on trains and tracks or in rail yards safer.

The Federal Railroad Administration is currently seeking feedback on how to write regulations for those required rail employee risk reduction programs. Making an obvious, but welcome, suggestion, unions and groups representing conductors, engineers, carmen, signalmen, dispatchers and others have advised FRA to ask the people who everyday face risk for getting injured or killed by locomotives, rail cars or train equipment how to improve safety.

In an official letter to the agency, the groups noted that workers have essential information to share regarding managing fatigue, dealing with security risks and integrating new technologies into their jobs and procedures. Equally important, the organizations wrote, was compiling and sharing information about reportable on-the-job injuries, whistleblower cases and instances of apparent retaliation, and the safety records of regional and shortline railroads.

I concur wholeheartedly with those recommendations. My colleagues and I have spent decades representing victims of rail accidents. We often hear from plaintiffs how incidents could have been prevented if the railroads had taken certain steps to remove or resolve dangers. We rarely learn that the employers took the time to learn from their workers what risk reduction efforts were needed.

FRA should make every effort to ensure that rail employees have a voice at the table when railroads put together plans to improve safety.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including 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. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.

By John Cooper, Railroad Injury and FELA Attorney

Major freight railroads across the United States reported record or near-record profits for 2010. Union Pacific had its best financial year ever. Kansas City Southern saw its year-to-year profit grow 82 percent. The two rail operators with the largest presence in my part of the country, CSX and Norfolk Southern, both increased their profits by more than 35 percent.

When discussing his company’s performance during the fourth quarter of the past fiscal year, the CEO of Norfolk Southern said, “During 2010, we profitably grew the business, invested in the franchise, generated significant levels of cash, and produced attractive returns for our shareholders. We have every reason to believe that 2011 will be an even stronger year for us.”

Missing from that rosy scenario is the reality that 2010 was another dangerous, deadly year on America’s rails and in the nation’s rail yards. Through the end of last November, the Federal Railroad Administration received some 8,000 reports of injuries and deaths among railroad workers, rail passengers and people crossing tracks in vehicles or on foot. That represented an increase of nearly 200 over the same period of 2009.

It’s also likely that the 2010 and 2009 figures are lower than the actual number of reportable, FELA on-duty incidents. Fearing  illegal and unethical intimidation, discrimination and retaliation against men and women who stand up and tell the companies of accidents and safety problems, many rail employees may not report dangers and injuries.

As freight volumes, miles traveled and hours on the job have grown, the numbers of accidents and fatalities on railroads have kept pace. That logic need not hold, however.

Dedicating a meaningful portion of their hundreds of millions in profits to identifying and resolving risks to employee and public safety would allow railroad operators — from Amtrak to Canadian Pacific — to better protect workers, riders, drivers and pedestrians. Needed improvements include clearing sight lines around and along private grade crossings, strengthening fencing along tracks in urban areas, deploying positive train control technology and developing work rules and staffing levels that ensure employees get adequate rest between shifts.

Safety costs money. But having spent decades working with my law firm colleagues to represent and provide legal advice to victims of railroad accidents, I know that each dollar spent on making trains, tracks, rail yards and train equipment safer is a dollar well spent.

EJL

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton is an injury law firm with a long history of representing railroad workers in FELA and other railroad injury cases. Check out our railroad injury case results to see for yourself. Our offices are in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA), and Elizabeth City, North Carolina (NC). Our lawyers hold licenses in VA, NC, SC, WV, KY and DC and have handled hundreds of railroad injury and FELA cases throughout the eastern United States. We would like to send you one of our FREE reports about railroad injury and FELA cases, including 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. Furthermore, our lawyers proudly moderate the Yardlimits Railroad Community Forum and donate to the Fallen Brother Fund.