>> About every two hours in the U.S., a person or vehicle is hit by a train.
>> About half of all crossing collisions occur at highway-rail intersections with flashing lights and/or gates.
>> The No. 1 cause of fatal collisions is trespassing — people walking or driving onto tracks illegally. About one-quarter of those are suicides.
>> Train-vehicle collisions nationally numbered about 12,000 per year in 1972, the first year of Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit education program financed by railroads, highway safety groups and governments (www.oli.org).
>> By last year, such collisions had been cut by 84 percent, to about 1,880.
SOURCE: Federal Railroad Administration
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