Wed, Dec 03 2008
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Published October 14, 2008 10:16 pm - CARTHAGE, Mo. — If you drive a dark Kia sport utility vehicle or a white S10 Chevrolet Blazer that crossed the railroad tracks at Centennial Street about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday as a train approached, somebody is looking for you. Jasper, Newton counties account for 20 percent of railroad-crossing crashes By Wally Kennedy wkennedy@joplinglobe.com CARTHAGE, Mo. — If you drive a dark Kia sport utility vehicle or a white S10 Chevrolet Blazer that crossed the railroad tracks at Centennial Street about 2:15 p.m. Tuesday as a train approached, somebody is looking for you. Someone has something to give you: a personalized ticket for going through a railroad crossing when warning lights were flashing. “Centennial and Fairview are problem crossings,” said Dusty Hicks, an engineer on the Missouri & Northern Arkansas locomotive. That information was duly noted by Sgt. Mike Watson with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, who was riding in the locomotive. Watson got on his radio and alerted Carthage police to the Kia and the Blazer. As he approached Fairview Street, he was back on the radio again, telling police to look for a white Chevrolet Monte Carlo and a white Buick that went through that crossing as the warning lights flashed. “If those lights are flashing, you must stop. That is the law,” Watson said. “People are in just too much of a hurry.” Officers, deputies and state troopers will be riding the rails this week in Jasper and Newton counties to ticket motorists who fail to stop at railroad crossings when they should. They are getting full cooperation from the three railroads with tracks in the counties. Hicks said some motorists obey the law, but many do not, especially at crossings in Joplin. “I have seen a car go off in the ditch to get around a train near the college (Missouri Southern State University) during the lunch hour,” he said. Railroads are helping with the enforcement because they know that when it comes to wrecks involving trains and cars, the train wins every time. Nine law-enforcement agencies are teaming up to conduct the weeklong safety blitz in Jasper and Newton counties. Sixteen crashes were reported at crossings with warning lights and/or gates in the two-county region between October 2006 and September 2008. These crashes happened despite stepped-up efforts involving driver education in the schools, increased law enforcement, and ongoing improvements to crossings by the Missouri Department of Transportation and the railroads. Becky Baltz, head of MoDOT’s regional office in Joplin, said: “More than 20 percent of the railroad-crossing crashes in Missouri during the past two years have occurred in either Jasper or Newton counties. 
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