'Road drivers can't judge approaching train speed correctly'

Road drivers cannot accurately judge their speed of an approaching train when proceeding through a passive level crossing, a new study in Australia has found.
Researchers have undertaken field tests to determine if a driver is able to make a reliable judgement to safely proceeding through a passive level crossing based on the distance a train is visible and the speed it is travelling.
"Railway crossings are designed to an Australian standard that calculates the sighting distance required to safely navigate a level crossing based on the physics of moving vehicles," said Gregoire Larue, a researcher at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

However, the formula had been demonstrated to be inaccurate at high speeds for heavy vehicles and a margin of more than 15 seconds extra could be required to safely clear the crossing than what might have been allowed for in the road design, Larue said.
As part of the study, Larue tested 36 drivers to determine the distance they could clearly see and identify a train approaching and their accuracy in calculating the train's speed.
"What we found was that most drivers could see the train from a very long distance, with 85 per cent identifying a train further than 1450 metres," he said.

"Drivers were also able to identify the train as moving on average at a distance of 1298 metres away," he added.

However, drivers' estimates of train speeds were very poor and up to 44 per cent under the actual train speed.
"At 1100 metres away drivers' speed estimate was on average 44 per cent lower than the actual train speed, so despite travelling at 130 kilometres per hour drivers thought the train was travelling at 75 kilometres per hour," said Larue.
Larue said the study had found that tested drivers were all able to detect the train 750 metres away.