Car and Train Crashes

I’m Katelyn Holub, an attorney focusing on personal injury law in northwest Indiana.

Welcome to Personal Injury Primer, where we break down the law into simple terms, provide legal tips, and discuss personal injury law topics.

Today’s question comes from a caller concerned about her daughter who was injured when the car her boyfriend was driving was hit by a train.

She wanted to know her daughter’s legal rights.

Railroad crossing crashes are often complex and require extensive investigation.

In the caller’s case, the boyfriend driver died, and the daughter who was injured as a passenger was in a coma in the ICU.

The caller said she knew of no witnesses to the crash as it happened late at night at a rural grade crossing.

The crossing did have a flasher and bells, but no gate.

The crossing had poor visibility due to its angle, steep incline, and overgrown brush. Though the crossing had an active warning device in the form of a flasher and bells, the caller said she has to cross at the same crossing every day and has noticed that sometimes the flasher does not come on at all, or comes on when a driver is so close to the tracks that you cannot see the flasher. She says she almost got hit the week before but was lucky and slammed on her brakes.

A police report that the caller obtained said the police asked neighbors near the crossing if they heard a train whistle at about the time of the crash. No neighbor recalls hearing a whistle or horn or any other sound besides the crash.

As we analyze the legal options of the daughter of the caller, it is fair to first observe that a driver traveling on a highway must exercise ordinary or reasonable care in approaching a railroad crossing to avoid injury.

It is possible that an investigation will reveal that the deceased boyfriend was at fault, in which case his auto insurance may be required to make good up to policy limits on a judgment obtained against the estate of the deceased driver. The caller did say that there were empty beer cans found in the car, so perhaps the boyfriend was drinking.

But, what is the duty of the railroad, and the railroad engineer?

An operator of a train has a duty to exercise the care an ordinarily prudent person would use, under the same or similar circumstances. The failure to exercise such care is negligence.

In the absence of legislation regulating the speed of railway trains in rural districts, a railroad company has the right, as between it and travelers on the highways, to run its trains over country crossings at any speed it may choose, subject to the common law rule of reasonable care.

Generally, speed alone is rarely negligence in the absence of a statute or ordinance limiting speed, but railroads must regulate speed with proper regard for human life.

It is also the duty of railroad companies to give signals required by statute when approaching a public crossing, and a breach of this duty constitutes negligence. So if a statute requires a horn or whistle, the train operator must give the signal required and it can be negligent if a warning signal is not given.

In the caller’s case, it also would be advisable to investigate federal law dealing with grade crossing protection. Perhaps the railroad was required to have gates. Perhaps the flashers were set to activate so as to give a motorist enough warning for a train going 45 mph but did not activate soon enough because the train was going 70 mph, as confirmed by the event recorder on the train.

Another area to investigate would be federal and state laws governing the removal of overgrown brush at a crossing. Especially brush that would block the view up and down the tracks by drivers stopped at the crossing. This may be grounds to hold the railroad negligent given the angle of the crossing and the steep incline, both of which would magnify the danger posed by failing to clear away overgrown brush.

I hope you found this information helpful. If you are a victim of someone’s carelessness, substandard medical care, product defect, work injury, or another personal injury, please call (219) 736-9700 with your questions. You can also learn more about us by visiting our website at DavidHolubLaw.com – While there, make sure you request a copy of our book “Fighting for Truth.”