Six days in, first Brightline fatality on Treasure Coast unseemly; plenty more to come
I’ve got a confession.
A few weeks ago, after speaking with a longtime railroad executive from Hobe Sound and Indian River County’s sheriff about the potential danger of Brightline trains running through the Treasure Coast, I had a fleeting, morbid idea.
What if I asked readers to weigh in on how long it would take before a Brightline train killed someone here?
Doing so would have been tasteless, sensational, disrespectful, etc.
I never thought it would take only six days of service through the Treasure Coast for someone to die — even if Sheriff Eric Flowers had planted the following seed in my head.
“Literally, there's somebody walking around Indian River County now that doesn't even realize they’ve got a clock running across the top of their head,” an emotional Flowers told me in August. “And that somebody can't see they're just not going to be here with us anymore come this Christmas. And that's insane to me.”
Flowers’ deputies, some of whom have been trained in how to handle Brightline crashes and investigations, didn’t get the first tragedy. St. Lucie County did.
On Thursday morning, we read about the incident in a St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post.
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“At approximately 8:54 this morning, detectives responded to the 4400 block of South Indian River Drive after a northbound Brightline train fatally struck a trespasser on the tracks just north of Midway Road. The trespasser has not been identified at this time.”
Later, St. Lucie Sheriff Ken Mascara “identified the deceased as being homeless and who reportedly has family in Lake County,” TCPalm’s Will Greenlee reported, adding:
“Mascara noted ‘strong evidence to suggest that he may potentially have committed suicide in this incident.’ ”
We may never know for sure why the "trespasser" was hit.
Did he want to end his life?
Was he trying to cross the tracks to get somewhere?
Brightline crashes have led to nearly 100 railroad fatalities in South Florida since 2017, TCPalm reported Thursday, citing federal incident records.
“About half the fatalities involved the victim walking or running on the tracks,” Lindsey Leake reported. "At least seven deaths were ruled suicides.”
Roads blocked more often than railroad tracks
The Associated Press, which has been tracking Brightline deaths since 2019, called the 25-year-old man’s death in St. Lucie County Brightline’s 99th fatality. AP also reported on the railroad’s record of having the highest death rate in the nation per mile traveled of any train operator.
“None of the previous deaths have been found to be Brightline’s fault — most have been suicides, drivers who go around crossing gates or pedestrians running across tracks,” the news agency reported.
I thought about that as I drove Thursday evening, finding a road to my neighborhood blocked by several emergency vehicles, including at least two ambulances. While we’re not blocked every day, we see way too many crashes — one reason why Florida auto insurance rates are the highest in the nation.
How do car wrecks compare to Brightline crashes?
AP reported Brightline had 1 death per 32,000 miles traveled. Though somewhat of an apples-to-oranges comparison ― thankfully Brightline passengers have been safe ― how does that compare to motor vehicles?
Brightline eschews some safety options
In 1923, the motor vehicles crash death rate — not just for people struck and killed — was 18.65 for every 100 million miles driven, according to the National Safety Council. In 2021, it was down to 1.50 deaths per 100 million miles driven, an infinitesimal rate compared to Brightline.
But with vehicles, there’s usually no “big, bad company” to blame. Occasionally, vehicle defects are blamed, but most of the time, the blame is ours, drivers.
With Brightline, barring some rare gate malfunction, people's actions will cause their own deaths.
Just as we do on the road, we have an obligation to act more responsibly around trains — regardless of our mode of transportation.
Gil Lamphere, the railroad executive with offices overlooking Florida East Coast Railway tracks in Hobe Sound, has called on Brightline to install “low-cost, motion-activated cameras that record people’s faces enabling law enforcement ticketing (for trespassing) … (as a) much greater deterrent to human crossings and suicides."
On Friday, Brightline announced it received a $1.648 million federal grant to install cameras on locomotives as part of a system to "collect real-time data of trespass activity along the Brightline/FEC Railway corridor. The data collected by locomotive front-end cameras will guide future decisions related to infrastructure, enforcement and education."
It doesn't sound nearly as robust as Lamphere's concept, which would include cameras on poles along the tracks. If trespassers are seen remotely by security personnel, they could be warned by speaker or ticketed.
Others wanted Brightline to install what Lamphere said were more expensive fences along the route to limit illegal crossings.
Trespassers root of the problem
As for "illegal" crossings, I remain — like Flowers told me he was ― troubled by language the railroad uses to describe its crash victims.
As Leake noted in her report:
“The sheriff’s office on Facebook referred to the person as ‘a trespasser.’ Each Brightline death is classified the same way in federal records.”
Trespasser: “to enter unlawfully upon the land of another,”Merriam-Webster says.
It’s not just a person who wanted to die.
It could be a person who tried to drive around a gate or who got stuck on the tracks, then compounded a bad decision by staying in a vehicle.
It could be, as Lamphere said of some folks he sees crossing tracks near his office, the elementary school-aged children walking home; a mother and father with a baby and toddler going to the grocery store; a well-dressed man headed to a café.
Some "trespassers," inevitably, don’t own cars and rely on walking or bicycling in unpredictable Florida weather to get to their destinations.
The nearly 100 “trespassers” Brightline trains have hit are someone’s brother, sister, child, parent, etc.
The term "trespasser" and what Flowers perceived as Brightline's seemingly callous consideration of victims, including local first responders who have to clean up the mess, reminded me of a discussion the other night at the Republican presidential debate.
Talking about protecting rights of the unborn, candidate Chris Christie said Americans should be “pro-life” for a person’s entire life. Ensuring people have access to mental health care and drug rehabilitation programs are important.
Until we travel by personal flying vehicles, crossing railroad tracks will be a daily chore for many.
People will die. How many?
“You are going to see people falling right and left,” Lamphere said weeks ago.
I still hope he’s wrong, but things have not started well. We have an obligation to act safely, but so does Brightline.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: How many will die by Brightline in Vero, Stuart, Fort Pierce, Sebastian?
