Australians, it would seem, have a death wish with trains.

This week on Sunday we show just how irresponsible and stupid some drivers — especially the drivers of big trucks — are being at railway level crossings.

Barely three months on from one of the worst rail disasters in Australian history — Kerang, in country Victoria, where 11 people died and 14 were injured — Sunday has been riding locomotives with the train drivers and seeing from the train driver's view just what's happening on our tracks.

And it's horrifying. At a crossing near one of Australia's biggest oil refineries — the exact location not to be revealed for obvious reasons — massive fully-laden lorries speed through ringing bells and flashing red lights in front of an oncoming, and clearly visible, locomotive loaded with dozens of 41,500 litre bulk fuel tanks.

As Sunday leaves Melbourne on the Overland Express to Adelaide, motorists and pedestrians scoot across the tracks in front of the oncoming train, brazenly ignoring warning lights, train horns, bells and even — in some vision taken by VicRail cameras — going around lowered boom barriers.

Previously unreleased footage caught on railway security cameras shows also just how crazy some pedestrians are around level crossings. Sunday will be broadcasting extraordinary video of pedestrians dashing in front of on-coming trains, missing death by — in some cases — just a few centimetres. They must know the train is there but something tells them they can get across. All too many drivers and pedestrians are learning, all too late, that such notions are ill-considered.

Clearly, Sunday's Ross Coulthart argues, there's a need for a massive education campaign by governments, rail operators and road transport educators to alert drivers to the threat at level crossings. But as Sunday's investigation suggests there is a much broader problem with our road and rail infrastructure.

In the past few years the number of incidents involving collisions between trains and heavy trucks at level crossings has spiralled. Both rail safety experts, rail operators and trucking industry spokespeople all agree the problem is getting worse.

Sunday's Ross Coulthart investigates why these accidents are happening.

Over two-thirds of Australia's 9,000 level crossings are passive — which means they have no warnings other than a give way or stop sign. But, as the program shows in graphic video evidence, drivers routinely drive through the so-called active crossings (red lights, warning bells and even boom barriers) even when they're installed. There is a completely false perception among many drivers — especially truckies — that they can scoot through a crossing in time before a train gets to the crossing.

As one of Australia's foremost rail safety experts shows Coulthart in an experiment at a level crossing, a B-Double truck needs 18.6 seconds to cross a level crossing safely. But — accepting that most of Australia's level crossings are passive ones, with no warning bells or lights or boom barriers — how long does it take for a modern high-speed train to get to a level crossing from around a typical bend on approach to a crossing?

As Sunday's investigation shows, there are concerns that some passively protected level crossings just don't give truck drivers enough time to cross. If the crossing that Sunday was filming at for its experiment was just a passive crossing then any B-Double truck or semi-lorry would have been hit because the train took just 17 seconds to reach the crossing. And, especially out in rural Australia, there are far too many of these crossings where trucks and trains are being put at needless risk.

As the program shows, there are available technological solutions. So why aren't governments using them?

Travelling by rail in Australia is still far safer than driving on our roads but, as Ross Coulthart's report suggests, the explosion in the number and size of heavy trucks on our roads is only making both road and rail far more dangerous. The risk of another Kerang, where far more people die in a major rail accident, is very high according to the experts.

STUDIO INTRODUCTION:

The Kerang level crossing tragedy just ten weeks ago showed the horrendous consequences of a collision between a truck and a train. Eleven people died and 14 were injured in that one crash alone. Recently there's been a spate of similar collisions that could also have resulted in a massive loss of life. Today Ross Coulthart reports on just how irresponsible and reckless some drivers and pedestrians can be when crossing the tracks.

TRANSCRIPT

Reporter narrative:
A level crossing in an Australian city. We're outside a major oil refinery where, despite numerous warnings, drivers are routinely speeding through red warning lights and bells in front of oncoming trains. This train carries dozens of massive fuel tanks. Any collision could be disastrous and we see stupidity like this happen here time and time again.

[Trucks and cars drive in front of oncoming train against red lights and bells]

All too many Australians, it seems, are careless around trains, including some pedestrians. In June, one of the worst train disasters in Australian history. Eleven train passengers died when a truck collided with their train at Kerang in northern Victoria. Just two weeks ago, the third serious incident in five years involving the 'Ghan' passenger train. Each incident has involved collisions with heavy vehicles, fuelling rising concerns about level-crossing safety.


Brian NYE – CEO Australasian Railway Association:
The potential for catastrophic accident, a very large heavy goods vehicle running into the side of a passenger train, you could have hundreds die and we do not want that to occur.

Reporter narrative:
As you'll see today, there's a fear the recent spate of level-crossing smashes will only get worse with the growing numbers of heavy trucks on our roads.

Dr Eric Wigglesworth – rail safety expert:
The facts of life are that the number of trucks that are involved in railroad level-crossing smashes have grown dramatically over the last 10, 20 years and that trend will increase.

Reporter narrative:
It's early morning at Melbourne's Southern Cross station. Locomotive drivers Stuart Keating and Daniel Seymour clock on to take hundreds of passengers on the first leg of the 'Overland Express' to Adelaide.

Traindriver – Stuart Keating:
Roger, Pat, on the move, mate.

Reporter narrative:
We're coming along for the ride today to see for ourselves what train drivers see every day.

Just minutes along the track, this car ignores the warning lights and scoots across in front of our train.

Reporter Q to Stuart Keating: He went straight through then. He went straight through there?

A: Yeah.

Reporter narrative:
If we were travelling at this train's normal top speed of 115km/h, that car driver might now be dead. The same goes for these people strolling across the track.

Stuart Keating:
They come out of there and they will just walk across in front of you.

Q: There's not a great deal you can do if that train's coming there through there at 100km/h, is there?

A: No, it's all over pretty much.

Reporter narrative:
Incidents like these, including close hair-raising near misses, are now almost a routine part of any trip for Stuart Keating.

Q to train-driver: What's been the worst moment you've had in your time as a train driver?

A: I nearly ran four ... (Sounds horn) ..kids like that coming up is always a problem. I was driving a passenger train back in Ballarat years ago and the booms, the train ... sorry, a school bus came across in front of me. Didn't even look, didn't stop like they're supposed to, a bus full of kids, I was doing 115 km/h and the bus went across in front of me. Kids are looking up at you, you're sort of looking, it's worse ... if you make eye contact, it makes it even worse.

Reporter narrative:
When Vic Rail recently put a camera on just one of their suburban level crossing, there was no shortage of drivers behaving badly. Two hundred such breaches of the road rules were recorded every week day at just this one crossing alone.

Stuart hasn't had a level-crossing smash, yet, and he hopes he never has one, but in the last few years, he's lost workmates in a series of appalling crashes.

In April last year, a heavy truck collided with this high-speed train at a crossing near the Victorian town of Trawalla. Two passengers died, 30 were injured. The crossing had give way signs, but no lights, bells or boom gates. One of those who died was an off-duty train driver colleague of Stuart's.

Q: It's pretty sobering when you're losing friends.

A: Well , it is. It's ... yeah, it's really sad. All the guys that we work with are guys that I've known pretty much for 30 years and it's just a terrible and senseless way for them to die. It's just ... it's just an absolute waste and it's something that can be avoided.

Driver: … I've had people go across in front of me here.

Reporter narrative:
Australia has about 9,000 level crossings and incredibly about two-thirds of those, about 6,000 or so, have no active protection, warning bells, lights or boom gates at all. Most are so-called passive crossings like this one with just a give way or stop sign.

Stuart Keating, train-driver: See, look at this. There's no protection on this.

Q: So really it's just a trust thing that people won't go through there.

A: It is a trust thing, yeah.

Reporter narrative:
The awful dilemma for train drivers is that even when crossings do have active warnings, like lights or bells, some drivers still ignore them.

Q: That car just went straight through.

A: Yeah. The bells would have been going.

Q: So he's clearly gone through against the lights?

A: Yep. See, these are the ones we worry about.

Reporter narrative:
Sadly, in the last 12 months, the carnage at level crossings has been horrific. Just a few weeks after Trawalla, a truck driver died when his heavy truck, loaded with 30 tonnes of citrus pulp, collided with this massive freight train near the Victorian town of Lismore. 700m of carriages were compacted by the massive forces into a 150m-long pyramid of twisted metal. Nearly 250,000 bottles of Barossa wine en route to Europe were shattered.

Aside from the tragic human cost, the total damage bill from this one truck collision alone ran to over $27 million.

David Edwards – GM Safety, Pacific National:
It was quite awesome in terms of the damage that occurred.

Reporter narrative:
David Edwards is the safety manager for Pacific National, the owner of the Lismore train.

David Edwards:
We're concerned that there's a deteriorating behaviour of some truck drivers in the heavy transport industry and it's an issue of - people are taking risks. They're not prepared to slow down to obey the road signs at level crossings.

Reporter narrative:
Australia's trucking industry spokesman, Stuart St Clair, acknowledges there's a problem.

Stuart St Clair:
There is always an element within any profession, Ross, of people who don't do the right thing. We need as an industry and we have worked very hard to raise that level of professionalism of all drivers.

Reporter narrative:
Clearly, though, much more needs to be done to educate truck drivers and, indeed, all drivers about the risks at level crossings. Now, the trucking industry has been making much of a recent study that shows that up to three-quarters of all truck drivers feel no pressure to speed but when you think about it, that figure is really quite astounding because it suggests that up to a quarter of all truck drivers do feel such pressures and is that a factor in the growing number of level-crossing smashes?

Q to Stuart St Clair: It suggest that is a large proportion of drivers do feel pressure to speed, doesn't it?

A: Well, it says there is a percentage that does feel that pressure.


Reporter narrative:
Investigations found that the truck driver who died in the Lismore crash was not driving in accordance with the foggy conditions that morning. The level-crossing signage and sighting distances were also found to be deficient. The train driver, though, Wayne Elliot, was completely exonerated. He's never spoken about the crash before now, but it is clearly taken its toll on him and his family.

Wayne Elliott:
But then you get the old place back, yeah, yeah. Noise, the headlights of the truck coming out of the fog, yeah. Going back to work I was a bit apprehensive, but it's probably had more of an impact on my wife. Up until the accident, you know, I used to go to work, come home everything was OK. But then after the accident, you know, she realised that there's a very real chance that one day I could go to work and not come home, so ...

Wayne driving train: Do you have an end of train on your screen, Bill?

Reporter narrative:
In the 10 months since he has been back on the job, Wayne's counted 58 incidents where motor vehicles have crossed in front of his oncoming train, some even driving around lowered boom barriers.

Wayne: They drive around the end of them. I've had that happen on three occasions. People are still willing to take that risk.

Reporter narrative:
What weighs on Wayne Elliot's mind still is that he could just as easily have been driving a passenger train that morning at Lismore and what might have been.

Wayne Elliott:
If it had have been a passenger train it would have been an absolute disaster. It would have been catastrophic. Fortunately, it wasn't a passenger train, but if it had have been it would have been terrible.

Reporter narrative:
Then came Kerang. Just 10 weeks ago, the Victorian country town became notorious as the scene of one of Australia's worst ever rail accidents. Eleven passengers on this train died and 14 more were injured when a heavy truck hit the side of their carriage, ripping it open. Investigations into why this crash happened are still continuing. The truck driver is to face trial for culpable driving.

In the wake of Kerang, the Victorian Government has announced a massive upgrading of key level-crossings with advanced warnings signs and rumble strips, but Kerang's level crossing already had warning lights and bells, visible from a kilometre across the flat farmland.

Brian Nye – Australasian Railway Asscn:
It's interesting, the amount of incidents where people die, where the most deaths occur, you know, is more than where there are all those boom gates. flashing lights, so that's not really ... and they occur in daylight and in fair weather conditions.

Reporter narrative:
With truckies spending well over $500,000 on a new rig these days, most carrying on board UHF radios, there's a view that rail and road operators should work with government to find a much safer technological solution than just warning signs and lights.

Stuart St Clair:
We see that in the M5 in Sydney when you go into the tunnel the car radio is being overtaken by announcements that are made through the PA system. What a great idea.

Q: So why don't we have those kind of transponders communicating between trucks and trains?

A: Well, I can't give you the answer to that. I really just don't know.


Dr Eric Wigglesworth:
What we are still using is our historical legacy of protection against motor cars when today the major problem is the truck.

Reporter narrative:
Level crossing safety expert, Dr Eric Wigglesworth, argues that governments are failing to heed the impact of allowing much heavier and longer trucks on our roads, alongside rail.

Dr Eric Wigglesworth:
A piece of research I did some 30 years ago, three trucks out of 85 were involved in consecutive level-crossings in Victoria, three out of 85. A fairly low figure. The most recent figures I have are for the last seven years in which case there were 21 fatal crossings of which six involved were trucks. So we have six out of 21 instead of three out of 85.


Reporter narrative:
To explain why he thinks this is happening, he did a simple test at this typical level crossing. This one's protected with boom gates but most of the thousands of crossings across the country have nothing more than a give way or stop sign.

Unlike this one, those passive crossings rely on drivers having an adequate sighting distance to make it across after checking for an approaching train. Bear in mind that a semitrailer, by law, is meant to have 17.6 seconds to get across. A B-double, 18.6 seconds. Without the barrier here to warn of an approaching train, a truck would barely have enough time to safely cross.


[Train through crossing]

Dr Eric Wigglesworth:
Q: There's not much in it, is there?

A: There's very little. There's not very much in the way of safety margin at all.

Q: One of the things that you said while we were doing the filming then as the train was approaching was that it looked slow. It wasn't, was it?

A: No, it wasn't. It just looked slow and that's one of the reasons why some many people fall into the trap. They assume because the train looks to be moving very slowly, it is moving slowly whereas in fact it's not moving the same speed as a motor car or a vehicle, it's travelling at 120km/h or whatever it might be. It is in fact moving very fast and in the last few seconds when it rocketed past us, we realised how fast it was going.

Reporter narrative:
And if, heaven forbid, a heavy truck does get caught on a crossing, its huge mass is another nightmare for train drivers.

David Edwards – GM Safety, Pacific National:
Over the last few years we've seen the trucking industry and trucks get bigger and heavier, longer, so as a result, what we've seen is that a few years ago if you had a level crossing accident there was normally very little risk of the locomotive or the train derailing, but what we're seeing now is the trucks are so long, so heavy, so huge in terms of dimensions that a train hitting a truck now has an equal probability that it will derail.


Reporter narrative:
There's a much broader debate behind the recent spate of level crossing smashes than merely raising public awareness of the dangers in taking on a train.

The amount of freight that needs to be moved nationally is expected to double in the next 20 years and to cope with that, governments are approving increasingly bigger trucks on our roads and backing much greater use of rail freight on our tracks, but has enough thought been given to whether our existing road and rail infrastructure can bear it? The concern is that these level crossing smashes where road and rail meet are just going to get worse unless governments massively upgrade our creaking rail infrastructure.

Dr Eric Wigglesworth:
Q: Is there the political will?

A: I think there isn't a political will because there aren't ... I'm sounding very brutal, we don't kill enough people at railway level crossings.

Stuart St Clair:
Q: Is the level crossing safety concerns that are starting to mount a consequence of the increased truck traffic on our roads?

A: Oh, both increased truck traffic and increased rail traffic. I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Q: You accept that?

A: Absolutely.


Reporter narrative:
We're riding a massive freight train this trip with driver Roger Farrar from Adelaide to Port Augusta. He knows the track here like the back of his hand and he mentions a black spot level crossing at Two Wells.

Roger Farrar:
There are quite a few places where trucks from piggeries and dairies and that cross the track, and they're double and your road is that close. You're kidding. By the time they stop, the train is still on the track.

Q: Do they get hit?

A: No, no-one's hit one yet, but as you say it's been a bit close sometimes.

Reporter narrative:
Just over a week after we passed through, the 'Ghan' passenger train collides with a truck, here at Two Wells. The truck driver and three train passengers are injured but mercifully no-one is killed. Sobering, though, to see the front of the 'Ghan' locomotive back in the yard, the force of the impact obvious.

And as train driver Roger Farrar demonstrates, even if he sees a vehicle on a crossing ahead there's little he can do about it. A lot of folk, it seems, don't quite understand the physics involved in stopping a train like this when it sees a car ahead on a level crossing. Roger here is driving a train that's got 4,800 tonnes of cargo on board. It's nearly two kilometres long and if he hits that emergency brake, it's going to take him about a kilometre and a half before he stops.

[Train-driver Roger Farrar applies the brakes on his train]

In fact, it takes a lot longer than that. We're just come up to two kilometres and we're still doing ... still doing 60km/h. We finally stop at well over 2 kilometres from where we pulled the brake.

Reporter: That's very sobering.

Reporter narrative:
This is Salisbury, a level crossing on Adelaide's outskirts where five years ago poor planning and road driver carelessness caused a tragedy. Just after school ended, a passenger train collided with a car and bus at this level crossing. Four people died and 26 were injured. No blame was pointed at the train driver. But half a decade on, that driver, Graeme Parslow, is still traumatised by the awful events of that day.

Graeme Parslow:
It was an event that was going to happen, it didn't matter what my mate and I did, it was just blow the horn, put on the emergency brakes, put the brakes into emergency and just sit back and wait for the accident to happen and it would be a pretty terrible death, I think, getting hit by us, I think. Being dragged for one or two ks waiting for us to stop.

Reporter narrative:
Graeme's an exemplary train driver, but in his time driving he has been involved in eight major level crossing accidents. Three major ones with trucks and buses.


Graeme Parslow:
They always say you know it's not your fault, you know, there's nothing that can you do, but the problem is it happened.

Reporter narrative:
What distresses drivers like Graeme is that tragic accidents like Salisbury and Kerang were entirely avoidable and no matter how safe a driver he is, it's only a matter of time before the next one.

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