LA HABRA : Keeping Drivers on Right Track

One driver said he didn’t see the crossing lights beginning to flash because he had looked down “for just a second.”

Another said she was too busy noticing the street’s freshly painted lines to see the lights or hear the bells.

But neither story swayed the La Habra police officers who issued both drivers tickets Wednesday as part of Operation Lifesaver--a sting operation against motorists who ignore railroad crossing signals.

The department conducted the operation in conjunction with the Union Pacific Railroad and the state Public Utilities Commission.

State law requires cars to stop once the red lights begin to flash.

Eight citations and three warnings were issued to motorists during the two-hour sweep Wednesday. The officers said they could have issued about 20 more tickets if they had been able to catch up with all of the violators.

Commission spokesman Jim McInerney said the purpose of the sting and others like it across the state is to cut down on the number of accidents in which trains strike pedestrians or cars. McInerney said 44 people were killed and 113 were injured in 309 such accidents statewide in 1990, the last year for which statistics are available. At least eight people have been killed in train accidents in Orange County this year.

“People don’t realize that it takes a train going 55 m.p.h. one mile to stop,” said McInerney, whose agency regulates train operations in California. “People will say, ‘It’s my life.’ But it’s not just their life. There is a crew on the train that can be hurt.

“It might be hauling chemicals and if the train derails and the chemicals leak, then they are endangering the hazardous materials crew that has to clean it up and everybody who lives nearby.”

As part of the sting, a six-car Union Pacific train went back and forth through the city. On board was Police Detective Mike Mitchell, who was equipped with a radio that allowed him to contact two motorcycle officers. Mitchell would point out drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians who went through a railroad crossing after the lights had begun to flash and the crossing gate arms had begun to descend.

Some of the drivers were quite brazen.

In one case, two pickup trucks drove around a crossing gate that had fully descended but got away because the motorcycle officers were citing motorists elsewhere.

Later, as the train passed through a neighborhood, a middle-aged woman clad in a sun dress came out of her back yard, scurried up an embankment and over the tracks about 30 feet in front of the engine. When she got to the other side, she smiled and waved at engineer Dave McGinnis and his crew. But there were no officers on hand to cite her.

At almost every crossing, at least one car would scoot over the tracks after the lights began to flash. McGinnis, who said he is “a rarity” among engineers because he has never been involved in an accident that killed or injured anyone, said it was just a typical day on the railroad.

“I have had quite a few close calls,” he said. “The ones that bother me most are the people who have their children in the back seat. I have gotten so close that I could see the terror in the children’s eyes.”