The golden age of the railroad has long since passed, but what you may not realize is that trains are responsible for transporting a whopping 12 million containers filled with all kinds of products each year. Think about that the next time your kids are counting cars on a train! Most railway tracks course through unpopulated areas of the country, through deserts, across prairies, and over mountain ridges. However, enough trains pass through towns and cities of all sizes to make train safety an issue. Consider these numbers: About every 3 hours a person is hit by a train. A driver is almost 20 times more likely to die in an accident involving a train than with another vehicle. It can take a train a full mile or more to brake. So we need to train …show more content…
Always stay away from the tracks. Uneven ground and the tracks themselves provide a hazardous walking surface. Trains come from both directions, so look both ways. Don’t ride bikes of any kind on or near the tracks. Be patient sometimes it takes a while for the train to pass. Don’t EVER EVER guess you can beat the train, you can’t, so just stop and wait. Just because you haven’t seen a train on those particular tracks before doesn’t mean there won’t be on, treat them as if a train could pass at any time. Playing on tracks is dangerous and illegal. Did you know that 50% of vehicle train collisions occur at crossing with active warning devices. 900 people are injured and 270 people are killed in grade crossing incidents each year in the US. These statistics show us that we don’t always use common sense. We think we are being daring or cool. We watch TV shows that make it look romantic or interesting to play on the train tracks but really they are dangerous and many people lose their lives yearly from making choices that could have been prevented. We need to teach our generation and the next generation the safety measures needed to stay safe while we continue to try and co-exist with