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[quote user="tree68"]Risk takers Impatience (which partially includes the next item) Fear of getting stuck for a long time (long train)[/quote]   Well as I have said here and in other threads, I think this plays a very large part in the risk-taking/impatience factor.  It is not just the fear of a delay from a long train.  It includes the fear of delay 5-20 times that long from train switching movements.  I know of no attempt ever being made to measure and quantify the actual cause of the impatience.  I think that extensive driver surveys would reveal the information.  But if the cause is as I suspect, I am not sure if the industry wants it publicized.  They might feel that it works against their position on crossing compliance.  I have thought that one way to measure the impatience is to compare driver compliance with grade crossing signals compared to traffic lights where there is no potential for an unexpected prolonged delay.  But as Zugmann points out, drivers do run red lights often.  I would say that 95% of that red light running is done as the light changes from yellow to red.  They don’t want to stop for the short cycle of the light.  However, I am not exactly sure how one would correlate the behavior of traffic light response to grade crossing response.  The two might not be comparable.    One point to consider is that when drivers run the red light just after it begins, there is a bit of grace in the delay for the opposing green light to start.  Drivers know that, so they account for that in their calculation to beat the red light.  Whereas, if you are applying the same kind of calculation to beating a train, there is no grace period. So in that sense, drivers are taking a bigger risk to beat the train than they do to beat the red traffic light.  There is also a strong tendency for drivers to underestimate the speed of a train.  And there is a considerable difference between the cycle of events at grade crossings compared to traffic signals.  The meanings and types of signal indications are different.  There is also a widespread misunderstanding of the meaning of grade crossing signals that has no corollary with traffic signals. I am sure that many drivers don’t want to wait for even a relatively short train delay.  But the point I see is that no driver can know how long a train delay will be, and a delay has the potential to be extremely long.
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