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[quote user="chatanuga"] Here's my take on the incident.  Even if the crossing signals had malfunctioned and not come on, the driver of the car was still responsible for looking and listening for approaching trains.  Crossing signals are like any other electronic traffic device.  They can and sometimes do malfunction.  If the car involved would have come up to a traffic light that was out (say from a power outage), and the driver went into the intersection without stopping and got hit by another vehicle, who would the parents be blaming?  I used that as an example because here in Ohio, you are supposed to treat a non-working traffic light as a 4-way stop, even though a lot of people don't.  People need to learn that even if the signals at a crossing aren't on, the crossbucks are still considered yield signs, which are regulatory signs like stop signs.  As long as the train crew did everything they were supposed to, I don't believe the railroad should be found at fault. Kevin [/quote] Kevin, That is an interesting point about the responsibility of a driver when driving through a signalized crossing.  I have asked what that responsibility is on this forum in the past, and never gotten an answer.  I have also not found that point laid out in the driving rules, but I do have a newer resource that I have not yet checked.  I suspect that there is a big difference in the way most drivers react to an un-signaled grade crossing and the way they react to a grade crossing with gates and lights. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p> In any case, I don’t believe that your analogy suggesting that the responsibility of a driver at a traffic light that is malfunctioning by failing to activate, is the same as the responsibility of a driver at a grade crossing signal that is unlit because no train is present.  The expectation of a traffic signal is that it should always be lighted, so if it is not lighted, it can be concluded that it has failed and is not protecting the intersection.  Whereas, no such conclusion can be drawn from a grade crossing signal that is unlighted because that is a normal phase of its operating cycle.   But I definitely want to know whether or not a driver is expected to assume all responsibility for yielding at a signalized crossing if the signals fail to activate as a train approaches.
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