Can a Train Really Be ‘Mistake-Proof’?

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

Did you happen to catch the Inside Edition TV show last Friday? A few people sent me a link to the piece, highlighting Brightline’s record of fatalities on Florida’s at-grade crossings, wondering whether I’d seen it. Actually, I was interviewed for it. We spent half an hour with their team. But they didn’t use a single word or idea I’d shared with them...so I’ll share the basics of what I said here with you.

Let’s start with the obvious. Any death is tragic, and we should all mourn with the families of those lost. My 13 years in the fire service gave me a closer relationship than most people have to what happens when lives end suddenly, and I know how real the pain is for those left behind to grieve and to make sense of it all. I truly do, and in some ways, I even struggled with how to write this.

Unfortunately, however, one way survivors try to make sense out of tragedy is to find someone or something to blame. It’s perfectly natural, it’s human nature. But creating a narrative implying that Brightline is running rogue trains killing innocent unwitting victims, and that higher speed trains are somehow uniquely dangerous, is just flat-out wrong. Worse, it could even discourage (maybe on purpose?) more investment in passenger rail anywhere, and particularly in modern, higher-speed services.

This is a genuinely harsh thing to say, and I’ll admit here that it sounds harsh, but if you drive under or around closed gates...you might get killed. If you walk across an at-grade crossing when the gates are down, the lights are flashing, and the bells are ringing...you might get killed. If you ignore warning signs and walk past the end of the fenceline to walk over active railroad tracks...you might get killed. And if you decide to walk inside the tracks with earbuds in your ears...you might get killed.

Would more fencing help? Yes, it probably would. Would more intrusion-detection systems help? Yes, they probably would. Would more prominent warning signs and signs offering suicide prevention care and hotlines help? Yes, they probably would, though with a caveat that in my experience someone determined to use the tracks in this way will see little deterrence in a sign.

Brightline is adopting all of those measures I just mentioned, and more. In September, the U.S. DOT finally transferred $42 million in rail-safety grant funds already awarded for that corridor:

> $24.9 million (announced in August 2022) to the Florida Department of Transportation - improvements to 330 highway-railroad crossings, along 195 miles of corridor, including fencing, crossing delineators, crisis support signage and other intrusion prevention mitigations.

> $1.6 million (announced in September 2023) for a Trespassing Identification and Classification System - advance technology to provide real-time alerts and aggregate data to generate heat-maps of trespassing and potential collision events on the Florida East Coast Railway right of way from Miami to Cocoa.

>$15.4 million (announced in June 2023) - increase safety at 21 grade crossings along the Brightline/Florida East Coast Railway corridor with additional crossing gates and delineators.

>$150,000 (announced in October 2024) for Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office - support overtime costs for targeted enforcement of pedestrian trespassing at identified hot spots.

That money came from grants approved by the Federal Railroad Administration under the Biden Administration which had yet to be obligated. One thing that’s emerged from these tragedies is the urgent need to speed up infrastructure delivery at the Federal level; some of these grants had been sitting unspent for more than three years. During those three years, 101 people in Florida were killed in collisions between vehicles or pedestrians and Brightline trains. Obviously, not all of these deaths would’ve been prevented – but probably some of them would, and we know regardless that these projects would’ve improved safety.

Even so, completing all those grant-funded projects would only do so much. It’s important to remember that – even with these collisions – passenger rail in Florida is much safer than driving. In 2024, there were 3,142 fatalities from car and motorcycle crashes in Florida. That includes 929 pedestrian deaths. More than eight people die every day in Florida because of these crashes, and Florida ranks third in the nation for fatal car wrecks.

Brightline made design and investment choices that left a lot of crossings at-grade — that lowers infrastructure costs, but the risks of pedestrian and vehicle incursions while a train is coming are higher. But it’s also true that every one of those trains and crossings has lights, bells, and gates that are working as intended. When someone drives around those gates or walks across after the gate's down, or walks in the right-of-way, that’s a personal decision, and it can often be a tragic one.

We can acknowledge both realities: that the infrastructure could be safer, but that personal responsibility doesn’t disappear just because the system could be safer. I disagree with the tort lawyer Inside Edition quoted claiming that Brightline should make the corridor “mistake-proof.” There’s no such thing as “mistake proof.” You mitigate risk as best as you can, you invest more when necessary – and the grant funding released in September will absolutely help with that – but the public has to recognize that its own decisions play a role no matter what physical barriers get erected.

This isn’t about trains careening out of control. Every one of these trains had its lights flashing, the gates were down, bells were ringing. We all have to take that seriously. DON'T drive around the gates, DON'T walk on the tracks, and DON'T assume a 96-mile-an-hour train can stop for you. Safety is a shared responsibility — Brightline has some work to do, and it’s doing it, but so do all of us.