MELBOURNE, Fla. — The National Transportation Safety Board will send a team to investigate after Brightline trains were involved in two fatal collisions with motorists who drove around operating crossing gates at the same grade crossing, the agency said on Saturday.
In a post on the social media site X, the NTSB said it would send the team to Melbourne “in coordination with the Melbourne Police Department.”
The driver was killed and three people were badly injured on Wednesday, Jan. 10, when an SUV attempted to beat a northbound Brightline train south of downtown Melbourne at the W.H. Jackson Street crossing south of downtown. Then, on Friday, Jan. 12, both occupants of a white pickup truck died when the driver sped around a lowered gate into the path of another Brightline train at the same crossing. That crash was caught on security-camera video, shown in a news report by Orlando TV station WESH.
Melbourne Mayor Paul Alfrey visited the scene after being informed of Friday’s crash, and said police saw the driver go around the gates.
“I need to stress to people, you have to follow traffic laws, including around trains,” Alfrey said, according to the TC Palm newspaper. “… This is about personality responsibility; you can’t be dumb.”
Where Brightline trains are authorized to travel at 110 mph on the north-south segment between West Palm Beach to Cocoa that is shared with Florida East Coast Railway freights, crossings are either equipped with quad gates that lower for all highway lanes or feature a wide divided median that prevents drivers from crossing over into the opposing lane of traffic.
If curves, bridges, or other route characteristics permit speeds no greater than 80 mph, not all crossings have quad gates or divided medians. Speeds are lower through Melbourne due to a curve south of the rebuilt Crane Creek bridge. The W.H. Jackson crossing where these accidents occurred is south of the bridge and the downtown area.
Its crossing gates protect only the traffic lanes. The crossing is about 25 miles south of where Brightline trains leave the FEC main line for the newly built line to Orlando.
A Brightline spokeswoman confirmed to Trains News Wire that trains are limited to 79 mph at the crossing and the Melbourne Police Department is handling the initial investigation.
