(Sand Springs, Oklahoma – August 18, 2011)
A 49-year-old motorist exiting Highway 412 South onto South 81st West Avenue in Sand Springs, OK, just south of Tulsa, OK, became confused with the signal given by an interconnected traffic light at a crossing of the Sand Springs Railway otherwise guarded only by railroad crossbuck signs and collided with a SS freight train early Thursday afternoon.
The traffic signals at this intersection are supposed to go to a flashing red mode when a train approaches, but has no resemblance to a standard railroad crossing signal. No one was injured, but the motorist received a ticket for “failure to stop” for a train he neither saw nor heard prior to the collision.