Families devastated by horrific rail crashes across Australia have banded together to release a video on social media calling for all governments to legislate mandatory lighting visibility standards.
Christian Jensen, 20, Hilary Smith, 19, and Jess Broad, 18, were instantly killed on July 8, 2000, when a Westrail grain train collided with the Toyota LandCruiser the trio were travelling in across the Yarramony rail crossing near Jennacubbine in the Wheatbelt.
Nearly 26 years later Mr Jensen’s sister, Wondinong Station pastoralist Lara Jensen, refuses to give up her fight to ensure freight trains across Australia are properly outfitted with lighting fixtures.
In her recent bid to make governments — both State and Federal — implement mandatory visibility standards, Ms Jensen has teamed up with country music legend Lee Kernaghan To launch a video showing the impact of rail crashes in regional Australia.
Mr Jensen’s, Ms Smith’s, and Ms Broad’s bright lives before the 2000 tragedy at Yarramony are revisited in the haunting video which highlights failings in the safety standards of the rail industry.
“If those changes had been made back then, we would still have our family members today,’ Ms Jensen said in the video.
“Instead, we have to watch on while other families go through these completely preventable tragedies.
“Something as simple, as cheap, and affordable as a beacon light could have saved three precious, beautiful lives in our particular crash.”
In 2001 then-State coroner Alistair Hope found no drugs, alcohol, or speed were involved in the crash and concluded inadequate train lighting as the reason for the horrific crash that ended the trio’s lives.
In his conclusion, Mr Hope recommended all locomotives be fitted with external auxiliary safety lighting to warn road users of its approach. The recommendations were never enforced by governments.
Kernaghan said his experience travelling across Australia and its vastness nailed home the importance of train lighting.
“Years on the road through country Australia have shown me how difficult these trains are to detect at night as they approach level crossings,” he said.
“They are simply not visible enough, and that needs to change.”
Outside of metropolitan areas, a large percentage of level-crossing rail lines do not have flashing warning lights or boom gates — trains often lack safety, visibility, or outline lighting.
Australian Trucking Association chief executive Mathew Munro said trains and trucks are held to different standards of safety — trucks are not permitted on the road if they lack the required lighting.
“To ensure trucks can safely share the road with passenger vehicles and pedestrians, they must have marker lights showing their full length, width and height from any angle day or night,” he said.
“Yet right now, the biggest vehicles on our roads — trains — are the hardest to see.”
Among the names memorialised in the video are Harvey Betts, Amanda Dempster, Ethan Hunter, Arthur Kerr, Cailee Mansell, Kyle Wooden, Ethan Griffiths, Terry Levett and Eugenio Piscioneri. All died from crashes on rail intersections.
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