Lucky passengers on an Amtrak train are back on track after a collision at a North Carolina railroad crossing sliced apart a stuck tractor-trailer rig. Police say the truck got stuck on the tracks Tuesday in Kings Mountain, about 30 miles west of Charlotte, North Carolina (NC).
Officers tried to notify Amtrak, but were too late and the fully loaded train from Atlanta to New York hit the vehicle and split the trailer apart. No one on the train was hurt. The truck driver escaped before the train hit.
We don’t know why the big-rig driver decided to ignore warning signs that explicitly told truckers not to try crossing the tracks where the accident happened because of the steep grade. We do know that everyone involved was very lucky not to be injured in what could have been a catastrophic rail road crossing accident. The truck driver was cited for ignoring the warnings. Really, what was this guy thinking?
It’s this type of attitude towards safety that has given North Carolina (NC) the dubious honor of being ranked in the top-15 states for railroad crossing collisions/accidents. There have been 69 car-rail crossing accidents in North Carolina (NC) this year. In addition, over the past decade, there have been more than 30,000 railroad crossing accidents and more than 3,600 train accident deaths. Sixty-four percent of all railroad wrecks occurred in the top-15 crossing collision states.
Our personal injury law firm has a long history of representing personal injury victims in accidents that occur at railroad crossings between trains and cars or trucks. Deaths or personal injuries occurring at public or private railroad crossings involve a lot of different overlapping federal, state and local laws and statutes.
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