In an effort to alert motorists and pedestrians to the presence of an approaching train and avoid accidents at highway-railroad grade crossings, locomotive engineers regularly sound a train-mounted horn as they approach the intersection. Locomotive engineers begin sounding the horn approximately 1/4 mile from the highway-railroad grade crossing. This warning exposes a segment of the local community near the tracks to the sound of the train horn as well as motorists and pedestrians who may be approaching the grade crossing. However, residents living near the grade crossing are not the intended target of this auditory warning and the train horn noise is perceived by many residents living near grade crossings as highly annoying.
The current study represents one of several efforts by the Federal Railroad Administration to evaluate the effectiveness of auditory warnings designed...
Researchers assessed the feasibility of altering the locomotive horn sounding pattern of repetition at each crossing in a series of closely-spaced gra...
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United States Department of Transportation
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