Congress debates how to cut deaths at railroad crossings
Submitted on July 22, 2005 - 12:00am.
Ansley Haman - Summer 2005
WASHINGTON – Members of Congress are working on a bill to reduce the number of deaths at railroad crossings, which increased 11 percent, to 368 in 2004, after a decade of decline.
“The railroads built this country, and those tracks have been there for over 100 years, but we cannot keep our heads buried in the sand,” said Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., ranking member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Railroad Subcommittee at a Thursday hearing.
Of the 2004 accidents, railroads reported only 79 percent to the National Response Center, a federally mandated clearinghouse of transportation deaths, said Kenneth M. Mead, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“The railroads built this country, and those tracks have been there for over 100 years, but we cannot keep our heads buried in the sand,” said Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Fla., ranking member on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Railroad Subcommittee at a Thursday hearing.
Of the 2004 accidents, railroads reported only 79 percent to the National Response Center, a federally mandated clearinghouse of transportation deaths, said Kenneth M. Mead, inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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