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By Chris Brown

Operation clear track

RCMP share Rail Safety Week message

Sep 25, 2020 | 4:33 PM

REDCLIFF, AB – Railway tracks criss-cross agriculture land across Canada, and farm and ranch families are never too far from one of those tracks.

As part of Rail Safety Week, law enforcement agencies across North America are getting their safety messages out through Operation Clear Track.

Redcliff RCMP Staff Sgt. Sean Maxwell says every time you approach a railway intersection you need to make sure it is safe to cross.

“If that’s in a vehicle, if that’s on a bicycle, if that’s even as a pedestrian and you’ve got to cross a railway track, you have to do it in a safe manner,” he said. “So you’re looking both ways well before you make the crossing and if there is a train coming at all you should be waiting until the train leaves.”

Maxwell says Mounties respond to a call about once a week about railway incidents.

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Just this week, a call came from Seven Persons about kids riding go-karts or off-highway vehicles near the track there, he says.

“People should never be playing on railway tracks, people shouldn’t be operating off-highway vehicles near railway tracks,” adding that if you’re in the close vicinity of a railway track you are probably on railway property. “If you are right beside the track and that is considered trespassing and people can be fined.”

Major rail safety issues aren’t common, but incidents do happen.

In May, one man was killed and another seriously injured in a vehicle-train collision near Brooks.

A Bow Island girl was killed when she was struck by a train while walking across the tracks in 2013.

Operation Clear Track, a partnership between Amtrak, Operation Lifesaver Inc., and Operation Lifesaver Canada, aims to reduce the number of railway incidents in Canada and the United States. Their statistics show that a motorist is 40 times more likely to die in a train-vehicle collision than in a crash with another motor vehicle. It takes the average freight train travelling at 90 kilometers per hour the length of 18 football fields to stop, so the train is unable to stop in time to avoid a collision. Crossing the tracks when there is an oncoming train is a deadly mistake.

“A split-second decision to try to beat a train at a crossing, or to use tracks as a shortcut or recreational path, can have tragic consequences,” said Sarah Mayes, National Director of Operation Lifesaver Canada. “Operation Clear Track’s goal is to encourage people to think twice before engaging in unsafe behaviours, and to learn how to keep themselves safe around tracks and trains.”