Hit by a train at a railroad crossing in Florida
A crossing collision is not a car accident with a bigger vehicle. The two things you will reach for first — the train was going too fast, and the crossing was not properly marked — are the two things federal law is most likely to take away from you. What is left is narrower, far less obvious, and often stronger.
Four railroads run through West Palm Beach. The Florida East Coast Railway owns the track through downtown and Brightline runs passenger service over it. CSX carries freight on the corridor to the west, with Tri Rail and Amtrak over the same rails. The crossings where those tracks meet a street are the places people are killed, and Palm Beach County has more of them on the Brightline route than Broward and Miami–Dade combined.
The obvious claim usually fails for a reason that has nothing to do with the facts of your crash. A 2007 amendment to the federal railroad statute put a different one in its place, and that one runs on records the railroad holds and does not keep forever.
Written by the attorney who handles the cases. Reviewed by Paul R. Shalhoub.
Why a crossing case has more than one defendant
In a two-car crash there is usually one other driver and one insurer. At a crossing there are generally four separate parties, each responsible for something different, and the one whose name is on the train is often not the one who failed.
The railroad that runs the train and the railroad that owns the track are frequently different companies. On the corridor through West Palm Beach they are: the NTSB recorded in January 2023 that Brightline operates on 65 miles of shared-use track between West Palm Beach and Miami, and that the track itself belongs to the Florida East Coast Railway. Signal and gate maintenance may sit with either one or with a contractor. The pavement, the stop line, the signs on the road approach and the sight lines along it belong to whichever government owns the street.
That matters because each of those parties is judged against a different standard, and because the one you can actually sue may not be the one you blame.
| Who | Responsible for | What a claim against them turns on |
|---|---|---|
| The operating railroad | Train handling, crew conduct, horn, speed, braking | Mostly federal: whether the crew followed federal rules and the railroad’s own operating rules |
| The track owner | Track condition, the crossing surface, vegetation and sight lines on railroad property | Track class and inspection records, and the railroad’s own maintenance standards |
| The signal maintainer | Gates, lights, bells, circuits, warning time | Federal grade-crossing signal rules, inspection and repair logs, and reported malfunctions |
| The road authority | Pavement, markings, advance signs, queue space across the tracks | State law, and whether sovereign immunity and its notice requirements apply |
The federal rule that governs all of it
Railroad safety is deliberately national. One statute says so, and it is the reason a claim that would be routine against a trucking company can fail against a railroad.
49 U.S.C. s. 20106 opens by requiring that laws, regulations and orders about railroad safety “shall be nationally uniform to the extent practicable.” A state may keep its own rule only until the federal Secretary covers the same subject matter. After that, the state rule survives only if it addresses an essentially local hazard, “is not incompatible with a law, regulation, or order of the United States Government,” and “does not unreasonably burden interstate commerce.”
Read that as a practical rule and it says: wherever the federal government has already decided how railroads must behave, Florida negligence law does not get a second opinion. Two of the places it has decided are the two places your case naturally starts.
“The train was going too fast” is usually not a claim
This is the first thing almost everyone says, and in most cases it is the first thing to go.
In CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Easterwood, 507 U.S. 658 (1993), the Supreme Court held that federal regulations preempt a negligence action “only insofar as it asserts that CSX’s train was traveling at an excessive speed.” The regulation doing the work is 49 C.F.R. s. 213.9, which sets a maximum operating speed for each class of track — 80 mph for passenger trains on Class 4 track, 90 on Class 5, and so on down.
So if the train was inside the federal limit for that class of track, the speed was lawful as a matter of federal law, and a Florida jury is not allowed to decide it was nonetheless too fast for the conditions. Not because the speed was reasonable. Because the question has already been answered somewhere else.
Where West Palm Beach sits on that corridor changes the number. The NTSB described Brightline’s Phase 1 from West Palm Beach south to Miami as a shared-use line “with speeds up to 79 mph,” and Phase 2 from West Palm Beach north to Cocoa as an upgraded line “with speeds up to 110 mph.” The city is the hinge. A collision north of it and a collision south of it involve different authorized speeds and, often, different track classes.
| Segment | Operator | Stated maximum speed |
|---|---|---|
| West Palm Beach south to Miami | Brightline, on Florida East Coast Railway track | Up to 79 mph |
| West Palm Beach north to Cocoa | Brightline, upgraded shared-use line | Up to 110 mph |
Speeds as described by the NTSB in its January 2023 Brightline overview. Timetable speed at a particular crossing on a particular day is a records question, not a published one.
“The crossing was not properly marked” depends on who paid for it
The second instinct runs into a stranger rule: whether you can argue the warning devices were inadequate can turn on whether federal money helped install them.
Easterwood treated federal participation in installing the warning devices at the crossing as the trigger. Where federal funds participated, the adequacy of those devices has been federally determined and a state-law claim that they should have been better is preempted. Where they did not, the claim survives.
That is a records question about one specific crossing, and it is worth answering early, because it decides whether an entire theory exists. It also cuts in an uncomfortable direction on this corridor: grade crossings here have been the subject of repeated federal and state upgrade programs, which is good for safety and bad for this particular argument.
There is a related point that surprises people. The NTSB found that all Brightline grade crossing accidents in the period it studied happened at active crossings — crossings that already had lights and gates working. The picture of an unmarked country crossing is not what is happening here.
The 2007 amendment that puts the case back
Most of what is written about train crossings for ordinary readers stops at Easterwood and leaves the impression that railroads are close to untouchable. Congress amended the statute in 2007 and that is no longer the shape of it.
Subsection (b) of s. 20106 says the section does not preempt a state-law action for personal injury, death or property damage where a party:
- “has failed to comply with the Federal standard of care” established by a federal regulation or order;
- has failed to comply with its own plan, rule or standard that it created under a federal regulation or order; or
- has failed to comply with a state law, regulation or order that is not incompatible with the uniformity provision.
The middle one is the important one and it is the one nobody quotes. Railroads are required by federal regulation to write their own operating rules, inspection programs and maintenance standards. Those documents then become the measure. A railroad that breaks its own federally required rule is not protected by the fact that federal law occupies the field — the federal law is what made the rule that was broken.
So the question stops being “was the train going too fast for conditions,” which is preempted, and becomes “was it inside the authorized speed for that class of track at that location, and did the crew and the signal department follow the railroad’s own rules.” Those are answerable, and they are answerable from documents the railroad holds.
Subsection (b) reaches causes of action arising from events on or after 18 January 2002. Subsection (c) adds that none of this creates a federal claim or moves the case into federal court by itself — it stays a Florida negligence case.
What actually happens at these crossings
The federal data is unusually specific about mechanism, and it is worth knowing before you decide what your own case looks like.
The NTSB reviewed FRA data for the Brightline route from January 2018 to October 2022 and found 102 crossing incidents. It broke them down in a single sentence: “53 were vehicles stopped on the crossing and 38 went around the gate.”
| What happened | Of 102 incidents | What it means for a claim |
|---|---|---|
| Vehicle stopped on the crossing | 53 | Often the strongest. Why was the driver unable to clear? Queue backed up from a signal past the tracks, a stalled vehicle, a gate that came down on a car already committed |
| Vehicle went around a lowered gate | 38 | The hardest. This is a traffic infraction in its own right and a large share of fault follows it |
| Everything else | 11 | Signal failure, short warning time, sight obstruction, pedestrian and other circumstances |
Counts from the NTSB Brightline overview of 25 January 2023, drawn from FRA safety data for January 2018 to October 2022. They describe that period on that route and are not a current figure.
Those first two rows are not morally equivalent and they are not legally equivalent either. A driver who was boxed in with nowhere to go is in a very different position from a driver who drove around a gate, and the second situation is where Florida law turns hostile.
Going around the gate: what Florida law says
If the gate was down and the car went around it, the statute is explicit, and an adjuster will have it open in front of them.
Florida Statute s. 316.1575, “Obedience to traffic control devices at railroad-highway grade crossings,” requires a driver to stop within 50 feet but not less than 15 feet from the nearest rail, and not to proceed until it is safe, whenever a signal gives warning, a gate is lowered or a flagger signals, an audible signal sounds or the train’s speed or nearness is an immediate hazard, or a train is plainly visible and in hazardous proximity. Subsection (2) separately forbids driving through, around or under a gate that is closed or being opened or closed.
A violation is a noncriminal traffic infraction. A first offense carries a $500 fine or 25 hours of community service plus six points on the license under s. 322.27(3)(d)7; a second is $1,000 and six more points.
The fine is not the problem. The problem is that the statute hands the other side a clean argument about your share of the blame, and since 2023 that share can end the case outright.
Why your percentage decides more than it used to
Florida used to reduce a recovery by the injured person’s share of fault, however large. That changed, and at a crossing it changes a great deal.
Under s. 768.81(6), a party found “greater than 50 percent at fault for his or her own harm may not recover any damages.” At a crossing, where a statute already describes what the driver was supposed to do, the other side starts with a head start on that argument.
Two things follow. First, the mechanism matters enormously — the difference between “stopped on the crossing” and “went around the gate” is often the difference between a case and no case. Second, a quick concession early, to a police officer or an adjuster, about what you did can be worth more to them than anything else in the file. The full rule, its exceptions and the date it attaches are on Florida’s comparative fault page.
The evidence that disappears first
Nearly everything that decides a crossing case belongs to the railroad, and most of it is on a retention schedule.
- The locomotive event recorder. Speed, throttle, brake applications, horn and bell activation, second by second into the collision.
- Forward-facing video. What the crew saw, and critically what the gates and lights were doing as the train approached.
- Signal and gate records. Inspection and test logs for that crossing, repair history, and any reported malfunction in the weeks before.
- The railroad’s own operating and maintenance rules. The documents that subsection (b) makes the measure of the standard of care.
- The crossing inventory record. The federal record describing that crossing, its devices and its history.
- The road approach. Signal timing on the nearby street, queue length, pavement markings and sight lines — which change, and are not the railroad’s to preserve.
A letter demanding preservation of those categories, sent to the operating railroad, the track owner and the signal maintainer, is the first useful thing anyone does in one of these cases. It is also the thing most often done too late.
A crossing collision and a trespass death are different claims
The federal data counts them separately, and so does the law. It is worth being clear which one you are dealing with, because the answers are not the same.
A crossing incident is a collision where a road legally meets the track. A trespass incident is a person on the railroad right of way somewhere that is not a crossing. The NTSB tabulated the two separately for exactly that reason.
A claim arising from a death on the right of way is much harder. The duty owed to a trespasser is limited, and a defense that the person should not have been there arrives immediately. It is not automatically hopeless — a known and tolerated pedestrian path across the tracks, or a fence the railroad was supposed to maintain, can change the analysis — but it is a different case with a different starting point, and anyone telling a grieving family otherwise before reading the file is guessing.
If someone was killed
Most fatal crossing collisions become wrongful death claims, which are brought differently from an injury claim and by a different person.
A Florida wrongful death action is brought by the personal representative of the estate on behalf of the statutory survivors, not by family members individually. That usually means opening an estate before the claim can be filed, which takes time that the deadline does not give back. The mechanics are on the Florida Wrongful Death Act page and the deadlines are on the injury deadlines page.
One point specific to railroads: evidence preservation cannot wait for the estate to be opened. The letter goes out first.
What Paul investigates in a crossing case
- Which company operated the train and which owned the track, and who held the signal maintenance contract on that date.
- The authorized speed and the class of track at that milepost — the number that decides whether a speed theory exists at all.
- Whether federal funds participated in installing the warning devices at that specific crossing.
- The railroad’s own operating and signal maintenance rules, and whether they were followed.
- Warning time: how long the gates were down before the train arrived, measured against what the circuit was supposed to provide.
- The road approach — whether traffic backing up from a nearby signal routinely leaves vehicles standing on the tracks, which is the road authority’s problem and shows up in the 53-of-102 figure.
- Every prior reported malfunction or complaint at that crossing.
When you probably do not need a lawyer, and when you do
Worth saying plainly, because not every incident at a crossing is a case.
If a gate arm came down on your parked or stopped car and scratched it, nobody was hurt, and the railroad’s claims department is paying for the paint, that is a property claim and you can handle it yourself.
If anyone was injured or killed, if a vehicle was struck, or if there is any suggestion that the gates or lights did not do what they should have, the evidence that decides it is already on a retention clock and held entirely by the other side. That is the point at which waiting costs something real.
Common questions
Can I sue the railroad if the train was speeding?
Only in a narrower sense than you would expect. Under CSX Transportation v. Easterwood, a claim that the train was going too fast for the conditions is preempted where the train was within the federal maximum for that class of track. What survives is a claim that it exceeded that federal limit, or that the crew broke the railroad’s own federally required operating rules, which s. 20106(b) expressly preserves.
The gates never came down. Is that a case?
That is one of the strongest facts available in this area, because it points at the signal system rather than at the warning devices’ adequacy. It is proved from the circuit records, the inspection and test logs and the train’s forward-facing video, all of which are held by the railroad and none of which are kept forever.
I drove around the gate. Is there any point calling?
There may be, and it is worth one conversation rather than an assumption. Going around a lowered gate violates s. 316.1575(2) and a large share of fault will follow it, and under s. 768.81(6) more than 50 percent ends the claim. But fault is apportioned on the whole picture, and a gate that had been down for several minutes with no train in sight, or a crossing with a documented history of false activations, is a different conversation from a driver who simply did not wait.
My car stalled on the tracks. Who is responsible?
It depends on why it was there and how long it had been. Fifty-three of the 102 crossing incidents the NTSB counted involved a vehicle stopped on the crossing, and a common reason is a queue backed up from a nearby traffic signal, which is the road authority’s responsibility rather than the railroad’s. Warning time also matters: how long you had after the gates started down.
How long do I have to bring a claim?
Two years from the injury for most negligence claims under s. 95.11(5)(a), for causes of action accruing after 24 March 2023. A claim against a government road authority requires written notice first and runs on a shorter clock. Evidence, though, is the real deadline here, and it is much shorter than either.
Does it matter that the train could not have stopped?
Not as much as people assume, and raising it is often a sign the other side has no better answer. A loaded train cannot stop in the distance available and nobody claims otherwise. The questions that decide the case are whether the warning system worked, whether the crew followed the rules, and why the vehicle was on the track.
Who pays my medical bills in the meantime?
If you were in a motor vehicle, your own PIP coverage pays first, the same as in any crash, regardless of who was at fault. That is explained on the medical bills page and the PIP page.
Is a Brightline case different from a freight case?
The legal framework is identical — the same federal statute, the same preemption analysis, the same Florida fault rule. What differs is the factual picture. Passenger operations run faster and more often, and on this corridor the operating railroad and the track owner are different companies, which means two defendants and two sets of records rather than one.
The police report blames the driver. Does that end it?
No. A crash report is an officer’s opinion formed quickly, usually without the event recorder, the signal records or the video, and it is generally not admissible to prove fault at trial. It does shape what an adjuster offers, which is a reason to get the underlying records rather than to accept the summary.
What does it cost to talk to the firm?
Nothing. Consultations are free and confidential, and the fee is contingent. We advance case costs, and you owe no attorney’s fees or reimbursement of those costs unless we recover compensation for you.
Written by
Paul R. Shalhoub
Personal injury attorney, West Palm Beach
Paul R. Shalhoub is the owner of Shalhoub Law Injury & Accident. He began his career defending insurance carriers and now represents the people those carriers underpay, handling every case himself from the first call through trial.
Related
If a train was involved, the records are already on a clock
Paul R. Shalhoub handles these cases himself. The first call is free, and the first useful step is a preservation letter to the railroad.
General information, not legal advice, and not a prediction about any particular case. Statutes and federal regulations change; the sources are linked so you can read them yourself.