How Dangerous Are Railroad Crossings?
Highway rail grade crossings, where a road crosses the tracks at the same level, are the second leading cause of rail related deaths in the United States, behind trespassing on the right of way. According to the Federal Railroad Administration, there are more than 2,000 grade crossing incidents and more than 200 deaths at crossings nationally each year, along with hundreds of serious injuries. There are roughly 212,000 highway rail grade crossings across the United States rail system, so the exposure is everywhere, including on rural Kentucky roads that see a train a few times a day.
The reason these crashes are so deadly is physics. FRA safety materials put it plainly: an average train of 6,000 tons traveling at 55 miles per hour needs a mile or more to stop, and it cannot swerve. By the time an engineer sees a vehicle on the tracks, stopping in time is usually impossible. FRA also notes something counterintuitive that matters in a real case: the majority of highway rail collisions happen when the train is traveling at less than 30 miles per hour. These are not all high speed impacts. A slow freight train weighing thousands of tons is still catastrophic to a car.
FRA sponsored research attributes about 94 percent of train and vehicle collisions to driver behavior or poor judgment at the crossing. That figure is the reason a railroad’s lawyers begin every one of these cases by blaming the driver, and it is also the reason the facts about the crossing itself have to be documented before anyone accepts that framing. Current year figures, the crossing inventory and the accident data are all published through the FRA safety data office.
What Should I Do at a Railroad Crossing?
A few habits at every crossing save lives, and in Kentucky several of them are legal duties rather than suggestions. KRS 189.560(1) requires the operator of a vehicle to stop and remain standing at a railroad grade crossing when any of four conditions exists: a visible electric or mechanical signal device warns of the immediate approach of a train or other on track equipment, a crossing gate is lowered, an approaching train or other on track equipment is visible and in hazardous proximity, or a human flagman signals the approach or passage of a train.
- Always expect a train. Trains do not run on a fixed schedule and can come from either direction on any track, at any time
- Never drive around a lowered gate. KRS 189.560(1)(b) requires you to stop and remain standing when a gate is lowered, and going around one is among the most common causes of fatal crossing crashes
- Cross only when you are certain you can clear the tracks completely without stopping, and never let traffic ahead of you trap your vehicle on the crossing
- Where the Transportation Cabinet has designated a crossing as unsafe, KRS 189.560(3) requires a full stop no closer than a marked stop line or fifteen feet, and no more than thirty feet, from the nearest rail. KRS 189.560(4) requires the cabinet to post an octagonal stop sign at those crossings, and KRS 189.560(6) exempts crossings that have gates, electric warning signals, other automatic audible signals or watchmen
- Wait until the gates are fully up and the lights have stopped flashing before moving
- Remember that a train is closer and moving faster than it appears, and that its width overhangs the rails on both sides
Two categories of driver carry heavier duties. Under KRS 189.550, operators of all buses and motor vehicles used for transporting children must stop not less than fifteen and not more than fifty feet from the nearest track, open the service door, and look and listen in each direction before proceeding, except where the crossing is protected by gates or a railroad flagman. If visibility is impaired at that distance the operator may roll slowly forward to gain the sight line needed to cross safely. Under KRS 189.560(2), a driver who holds or is required to hold a commercial driver’s license and is operating a commercial motor vehicle must slow down and check that the tracks are clear, stop if they are not, maintain enough space to clear the crossing without stopping, and negotiate the crossing only with sufficient undercarriage clearance.
If Your Vehicle Stalls on the Tracks
Get everyone out and away from the tracks immediately, even if you do not see a train, and move toward the direction the train would be coming from so you are not beside the vehicle if it is struck. Then look for the blue and white Emergency Notification System sign posted at the crossing. It carries the railroad’s emergency contact number and the United States DOT national crossing inventory number that identifies your exact location. Calling that number reaches the railroad so it can stop approaching trains. The FRA Emergency Notification Systems program explains how the signs work; the requirement comes from FRA’s 2012 final rule, codified at 49 CFR Part 234, Subpart E, which requires a sign on each approach to a crossing, positioned so it does not obstruct another traffic control device or limit the view of an approaching train, and visible whether the gate arm is up or down.
If a warning device is stuck on and no train is coming, Kentucky has a rule for that too. KRS 189.562 provides that where a warning device at a grade crossing has been activated for thirty minutes or more in the absence of an approaching train, because of track maintenance or nearby train movements, and the responsible railroad company cannot disengage it, the company shall position a flagman at the affected intersection. A crossing where drivers have learned to ignore a permanently ringing bell is a crossing where somebody had a statutory duty to put a person on the ground.
Why Aren’t Crossings Safer?
Not every crossing is protected the same way. At a passive crossing, only signs or pavement markings tell you the tracks are there. At an active crossing, bells, flashing lights or gates are triggered by an approaching train. The Federal Highway Administration reported in its Railway Highway Crossings Program 2022 Biennial Report to Congress that of 130,209 public railway highway crossings in the United States, 54 percent were active and 46 percent were passive. That is roughly sixty thousand public crossings with no active warning at all, and the share is highest on low volume rural roads.
Federal analyses have long found active devices more effective than crossbucks alone; FHWA has reported accident rate reductions of at least 64 percent, and in some cases as much as 97 percent, from installing active warning devices. But do not draw the wrong conclusion from that. FRA has also stated that more than 60 percent of crossing collisions occur at crossings that do have automatic warning systems, because those are the crossings that carry the most road traffic. Gates reduce risk per crossing; they do not eliminate it, and a gate that failed, a signal that activated too late, or a warning that had been ignored for weeks is a fact worth investigating rather than assuming away.
Kentucky imposes specific duties on railroads at crossings, and they are the duties a claim is usually built on:
- Audible warning. KRS 277.190(1) requires every railroad company to provide each locomotive with a bell of ordinary size and a whistle, and requires the bell to be rung or the whistle sounded at a distance of at least fifty rods from a highway crossing where a signboard is required, continuously or alternately until the engine reaches the crossing. KRS 277.190(2) lets a city, county, urban county or charter county regulate the sounding of whistles at night only by adopting the current federal requirements by ordinance
- Gates and flagmen. KRS 277.170 allows the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to determine that a gate or a stationed flagman is in the public interest at a highway crossing within one mile of a city’s corporate limits, requires the cabinet to give the railroad written notice specifying the character of the gate, the time to erect it and the hours it must be manned, and provides that the railroad company shall comply
- Malfunctioning devices. KRS 189.562 requires a flagman where a warning device stays activated for thirty minutes or more without an approaching train and cannot be disengaged
- Sight lines. KRS 277.195, created by 2026 Ky. Acts ch. 195 and effective July 15, 2026, is brand new Kentucky law on vegetation at crossings
That last one deserves its own explanation, because it is the most significant change to Kentucky crossing law in years and it took effect on July 15, 2026. KRS 277.195(1) now requires every railroad company to destroy or remove obstructive vegetation on its right of way at each public railroad highway grade crossing, for 250 feet in each direction, where the vegetation is more than thirty inches and less than twenty feet above the height of the crossing, within twenty feet of the nearest rail or the full width of the right of way where that is narrower, and within 250 feet of the centerline of the roadway where it meets the centerline of the nearest track. KRS 277.195(2) does not authorize or require a railroad to enter private property to do it.
The enforcement mechanism matters as much as the duty. Under KRS 277.195(4), the Transportation Cabinet or the local government maintaining the road may send written notice to the railroad’s registered agent requiring removal within thirty days, and under KRS 277.195(5) the cabinet or local government shall remove the vegetation itself if the railroad still does not act, then recover its reasonable costs from the railroad. Two limits are worth knowing before anyone builds a case on this statute. KRS 277.195(6) gives railroads until January 1, 2029 to be in compliance, and KRS 277.195(8) provides that the requirements in the section constitute the sole standards with respect to vegetation, obstructions and sight distance at public grade crossings unless superseded by federal law or regulation. KRS 277.195(3) also lets a railroad petition the cabinet to waive or modify the requirements where terrain, elevation, curvature or structures make compliance impossible, impractical or unnecessary, and the proposed modification replaces the requirement unless the cabinet denies or changes it within sixty days. So if overgrown vegetation hid a train from you, the first records to obtain are the notices, waivers and cabinet correspondence for that specific crossing.
Other crossings are dangerous for reasons no driver can control: signals that malfunction, a rough or humped surface that can hang a vehicle up on the rails, or structures that block the view. Where a crossing is unreasonably dangerous and the railroad or another responsible party failed to fix it, that failure becomes part of the claim.
Who Is Responsible for a Railroad Crossing Crash?
Start with the most important point, because it is the opposite of what applies to most cases involving public infrastructure. A railroad is a private company. It has no sovereign immunity, no governmental immunity, no statutory damages cap and no special forum. A Class I railroad is an ordinary tort defendant with extraordinary resources, and that combination, rather than any legal privilege, is what makes these cases hard.
Liability at a crossing is often more complicated than in an ordinary car crash, and more than one party can share fault. Depending on the facts, responsibility may fall on the railroad that operated the train, the company responsible for maintaining the crossing and its warning devices, the manufacturer of a defective signal or component, or another motorist. Where the railroad violated one of the Kentucky duties above, KRS 446.070 allows a person injured by the violation of any statute to recover the damages sustained by reason of that violation, even though the statute also imposes a penalty. That is the route from a missed whistle, an unmanned gate, a stuck signal or an unmowed sight line to a civil claim.
One Kentucky provision cuts the other way and is better known to railroad defense counsel than to drivers, so it is worth stating honestly. KRS 189.560(7) provides that the failure to observe subsections (3) to (6) of that section, meaning the stop and signage rules at crossings the cabinet has designated unsafe, shall not change the liability of any railroad in the trial of a civil case for death or injury. A driver’s noncompliance with those particular subsections is not a free pass for the railroad, and it is not a free pass for the driver either.
The one place immunity does enter a crossing case is if a government entity responsible for the roadway is named. A negligence claim against the Commonwealth or a state agency such as the Transportation Cabinet does not begin with an ordinary lawsuit: KRS 49.060 gives the Board of Claims exclusive jurisdiction over damages claims against the Commonwealth and its agencies, KRS 49.040(1) caps a single claim there at $250,000 with a $400,000 total for one act of negligence, and KRS 49.120(1) requires the claim to be filed within one year of accrual. That one year clock can expire while the claim against the railroad still has a year left to run, which is exactly the kind of mismatch that ends otherwise good cases.
Fault is divided rather than assigned wholesale. Under KRS 411.182(1) the fact finder assigns a percentage of the total fault to each party, weighing both the nature of each party’s conduct and how closely it is connected to the damages; KRS 411.182(3) makes each party liable for its own equitable share only; and KRS 411.182(4) reduces the remaining claim by the equitable share of any party the claimant releases. So settling early with one defendant in a multi party crossing case can quietly reduce what is left against the railroad.
Because these cases turn on evidence that disappears, including signal maintenance and inspection records, event recorder data from the locomotive, crew statements, the vegetation and sight distance condition on the day, and the crossing’s own incident history, it is important to involve an attorney quickly. A crossing crash is a motor vehicle tort, so KRS 304.39-230(6) generally allows two years from the injury or the death, or from the date of issuance of the last basic or added reparation payment, whichever occurs later. Where someone was killed, KRS 411.130(1) requires the wrongful death action to be prosecuted by the personal representative of the deceased rather than by a family member individually, with punitive damages available where the act was willful or the negligence gross, and KRS 411.130(2) governing distribution. Our overviews of car accidents and personal injury claims explain how Kentucky injury cases are built.
How a Kentucky Attorney Can Help After a Crossing Crash
A railroad crossing case means moving fast to preserve evidence, working with reconstruction and signal experts, and standing up to a railroad’s insurers and lawyers. Practically, that means requesting the locomotive event recorder data and the crew’s records before they cycle out, pulling the crossing’s inventory record and incident history from the federal database, obtaining the Transportation Cabinet’s file on the crossing including any unsafe designation under KRS 189.560(3), any gate or flagman notice under KRS 277.170 and any vegetation notice or waiver under KRS 277.195, and documenting the sight lines and surface condition while they still look the way they did on the day of the crash. An experienced attorney can identify every responsible party, keep both deadlines straight, and pursue the full value of the claim.
Hurt at a Kentucky Railroad Crossing?
A railroad will have its investigators at the crossing within hours, and their report will almost certainly say the driver was at fault. You are entitled to your own look at the gate, the signal records, the sight lines and the train’s own data. The Fleck Firm, PLLC was founded by attorney Tyler M. Fleck, a U.S. Army veteran who built his practice to serve people throughout Kentucky, from Elizabethtown and Hardin County to Bowling Green, Owensboro and Paducah. If you or someone you love was hurt or killed at a crossing, we will send preservation demands to the railroad, obtain the cabinet’s file on that specific crossing, and tell you honestly what the evidence shows. The first consultation is free and we work on a contingency fee, so there is no fee unless we win for you. Call (270) 446-7000, and if you cannot come to us we will come to you, including at the hospital or your home.
