More people die in rail-related incidents in California than in any other state, and officials say most of those deaths are preventable.<\/p>\n
Bay Area rail agencies gathered Wednesday at Diridon Station in San Jose to raise awareness about railroad safety and dangerous behavior around crossings.<\/p>\n
Representatives from Union Pacific, VTA, Caltrain, Amtrak, Capitol Corridor and other agencies displayed safety equipment and handed out educational materials as part of the safety effort.<\/p>\n
NBC Bay Area got a firsthand look at some of those dangers during a ride aboard a Union Pacific locomotive.<\/p>\n
Before boarding the locomotive, NBC Bay Area saw one driver stopped on the tracks and others stopped too close to the rails.<\/p>\n
From inside the conductor’s cab, a person was seen jogging around lowered crossing gates while warning alarms were sounding.<\/p>\n
Unhoused people were also seen camping and walking within feet of the tracks. Other drivers were seen making unsafe U-turns rather than waiting for the crossing gates to rise.<\/p>\n
Between 2020 and 2024, 593 people died in rail-related incidents in California, according to the latest available statistics.<\/p>\n
California also accounts for 24% of trespassing deaths, the highest percentage in the nation.<\/p>\n
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, 94% of deaths are caused by risky driver behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More people die in rail-related incidents in California than in any other state, and officials say most of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[3607,88,90,89],"class_list":["post-451745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-safety","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}