The National Transportation Safety Board announced on Saturday that it will look into two accidents involving Florida’s Brightline train, which resulted in three fatalities at the same railroad crossing along the high-speed route between Miami and Orlando.
The incidents occurred on Wednesday and Friday at a crossing on the U.S. 1 corridor in Melbourne, on Florida’s Atlantic coast, where the high-speed train operates its daily trips to and from South Florida.
Since the extension of Brightline’s route connecting South Florida and Orlando in September, there have been a total of five deaths, as reported by the Associated Press.
In Friday’s crash, both the driver, Lisa Ann Batchelder (52), and passenger, Michael Anthony Degasperi (54), from Melbourne lost their lives.
On Wednesday, 62-year-old Charles Julian Phillips died when the train collided with the vehicle he was driving, injuring three passengers, according to Melbourne police.
Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey stated to reporters that the SUV from Friday’s incident attempted to race the train.
He mentioned discussing with Brightline officials the possibility of launching another public safety campaign to caution drivers against bypassing railroad crossings due to the higher speeds of the train.
“I start by saying if the arm is down don’t go around,” Alfrey told Orlando television station WKMG . “There’s no good outcome with a train. This is an unfortunate situation. We have the loss of life again. There’s safety precautions for a reason, and people need to adhere them.”
The vivid, neon yellow trains can go really fast, up to 125 mph (201 kph) in some places. The journey from Miami to Orlando, covering 235 miles (378 kilometers) in 3.5 hours, is about 30 minutes quicker than driving on average.
The NTSB team was supposed to stay at the scene for several days, starting on Saturday.
“Investigators will work to better understand the safety issues at this crossing and will examine opportunities to prevent or mitigate these crashes in the future,” NTSB spokesperson Sarah Taylor Sulick stated to The Associated Press.
She mentioned that a quick report will be out in 30 days, and a final one will be available in 12 to 24 months.
Brightline hasn’t responded to an email asking for comments yet, but they’ve placed signs near crossings to warn drivers about the fast trains.
The three deaths in Melbourne this week bring the total to at least 108 since they started operating in July 2017. This means there’s been about one death for every 38,000 miles their trains have traveled. This is the highest death rate among the more than 800 railroads in the country, according to an ongoing analysis by the Associated Press since 2019. Among U.S. railroads covering at least 100,000 train-miles a year, the next-worst rate since 2017 belongs to California’s Caltrain commuter line, averaging one death for every 125,000 miles traveled during that period.
None of Brightline’s previous deaths were found to be the railroad’s fault. Most were suicides, pedestrians trying to cross the tracks in front of the train, or drivers going around crossing gates instead of waiting.
