Sunday, August 19 from 9am-11am
DEATH BY LEVEL CROSSING

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

This week, SUNDAY reporter Ross Coulthart shows 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, massive fully-laden lorries speed through ringing bells and flashing red lights in front of an on-coming, and clearly visible, locomotive loaded with dozens of 41,500 litre bulk fuel tanks.

Clearly, 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 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 spokesmen all agree the problem is getting worse.

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 almost certain according to rail experts.