Why has Safety Improved at Rail-Highway Grade Crossings? by

The number of collisions and fatalities at rail-highway intersections in the United States has declined significantly over the past thirty years, despite considerable increases in the volume of rail and highway traffic. This paper disaggregates the improvement into its constituent causes. Negative binomial regressions are conducted on a pooled data set for 49 states from 1975 to 2001. The analysis concludes that about two-fifths of the decrease is due to factors such as reduced drunk driving and improved emergency medical response that have improved safety on all parts of the highway network. The installation of gates and/or flashing lights accounts for about a fifth of the reduction. The development in the 1970s and early 1980s of the Operation Lifesaver public education campaign, and the installation of additional lights on locomotives in the mid-1990s, each led to about a seventh of the reduction. Finally, about a tenth is due to closure of crossings resulting from line abandonments or consolidation of little-used crossings.