Spain: Differential tariff for motoring offences to be eliminated

An initiative is underway to harmonise the penalties for motoring offences, including those applicable for infractions of the law at level crossings. To date, municipalities have been free to set their own tariffs up to a level of €300.

By way of example Gijon has been levying a fine of €300 whereas Oviedo has been using a €150 sanction. Now a three stage tariff has been implemented with minor offences justifying a €100 fine, €200 for serious infractions and €500 for very serious offences.

It is a moot point whether failure to stop as required at a level crossing should be seen as a minor offence in Spain with a tariff of €100 or whether it should be seen as an offence meriting a higher financial sanction. With the €100 sanction applying for this offence the effect of harmonisation is to increase the harmonisation has, for example seen an increase from €98 in Gijon and a reduction from €120 hitherto applying in Oviedo.

(May 18th, 2010)

Washington, DC: Systematic road assessment programme for the US?

The AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety has released the phase three report of their study considering the case for a systematic, ountry-wide road assessment programme – USRAP. Although the report doesn’t specifically consider the level crossing component of a highway, the report is a good explanation of the thinking behind and case for systematic road assessment programmes. These are already to be found in Europe and Australia.
               
In essence the case for a systematic road assessment programme is that more can be done to address the highways component of road accident causation. Clearly, there are places where the configuration of a level crossing is material to accident causation and therefore level crossings need to be a component of structured road assessment programmes

The full report can be found at:
http://www.aaafoundation.org/pdf/usRAPIIIFinalReport.pdf

(May 18th, 2010)

 

Although the digest covering the outputs of the National Co-operative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) project 17-18(19), a “White Paper
on Alternate Strategies for Safety Improvement Investments” does not consider level crossing safety, it provides a useful insight into the approaches adopted by state departments of Transportation.

Specifically, this digest presents the results of a study to review the two methods currently being used by states to allocate safety resources. The terminology commonly used to describe these methods is “black-spot” analysis and “systematic” methods. A survey of practice was distributed to all 50 states and follow-up case studies were conducted in four of the responding states —Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and North Carolina.

The states that participated in this project indicated that the characteristics associated with their severe crashes have caused their programmes to be more focused on rural areas, to include more projects that involve the proactive deployment of low-cost strategies widely across their systems, and to provide an increased level of engagement with local highway agencies. By extension, rail infrastructure owners ought to be similarly engaged as level crossing safety needs to be managed in a collaborative manner taking account of wider highway factors within advance warning signs deployed at level crossings.

The digest can be found online at: http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rrd_345.pdf

(May 18th, 2010)

Too often the punishments for level crossing offences handed down by magistrates are seen as little more than a slap on the wrist. This was not the case when Market Drayton magistrates heard the case of a motorist who overtook a car which had stopped at the Wem, Shropshire, level crossing and continued against the flashing red lights before crossing the railway as the barriers were lowering.

In this case the magistrates sitting on May 5th, 2010, handed down a sentence of a 12 month driving ban and a financial penalty of GB£1,575 for an offence of dangerous driving. Despite there being images from the crossing’s CCTV system, the motorist had pleaded not guilty to the charge of dangerous driving on September 23rd, 2009. The GB£1,575 financial penalty was made up of a GB£960 fine, GB£600 court costs and a further GB£15 victim surcharge.

The Wem level crossing has a significant history of abuse and as a result the crossing has been the focus of a concerted campaign by Network Rail working in conjunction with British Transport Police to raise awareness of the risks of running red lights and dodging lowering level crossing barriers (LXinfo September, 2009).

(May 8th, 2010)