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[quote user="AmtrakRider"] I feel kinda sorry for the guy who was jumping the tracks and hit the train.  He should have thought better, but at least he might have been said to have been crossing without realizing the train was there.The lady with the children in the minivan, though, continues to stymie me.  She started out WAY behind that train, raced at high speed in an attempt to beat the train.  Looking at the video, even without the involvement of the second train it seems unlikely she would have beat the first one anyway.  What could have motivated her, with her FOUR children in her car, to play "Russian roulette" with that train?On the original title of the post, I can see the relationship.  The meeting was called about trains "parked" across road crossings; the man died because the train was parked there when he attempted to jump.  There is a link, no matter how you interpret fault.[/quote]There is definitely a relationship between the risk-taking cause of car/train collisions and the incidents of trains blocking grade crossings.  Without a doubt, the latter fuels the former.  I believe this is something that the railroad industry and its representative organizations do not like to admit, even though it is clear that trains always have the right of way over motor vehicles, and so collisions between them are never the fault of the railroad. Nevertheless, there would be less risk-taking if there were less crossing blockage.  The linkage is axiomatic.  And in a town such as Friendship, Wisconsin where crossing blockage is frequent, of severely long duration, and simultaneously affecting multiple crossings, the risk-taking is bound to be relatively high. However, it seems all but certain that this particular crash was not due to the risk-taking cause because that cause can only apply to instances of a driver trying to beat a train.  If I am not mistaken, the train in this case had been stopped on the crossing, before the motor vehicle arrived there.  The only way a vehicle can run into the side of a train with a risk-taking motive is to fail to beat the train, and then fail to stop in time to avoid running into the side.  I can only think of three causes for running into the side of a train that has been stopped on a crossing prior to the arrival of the motor vehicle.  The most likely cause would be inattention; the driver is either asleep, intoxicated, or distracted.  The least likely cause would be suicide.  The other possible cause would be speeding, whereby the driver is overdriving his or her range of vision.  It is also possible that there could be a combination of the distraction and speeding causes.  The speeding cause might come into play when someone is driving faster than what is safe for conditions that limit visibility such as fog or rain, even though they are not exceeding the posted limit.  So while it is ironic that the issue of blocked crossings was scheduled to be officially reviewed when this serious RIT crash occurred, it does not seem that crossing blockage could have contributed to the motive of the driver.  If a train in this town broadsided a car operated by an undistracted, non-suicidal driver then the risk-taking cause would be highly probable.The premise that this crash victim was attempting to "jump the tracks" is pure speculation by the way.
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