No improvement

This railroad crossing is still a fire hazard

On Friday, a car was torn apart by a goods road

(Bild: TEAM FOTOKERSCHI / TARAS PANCHUK)

On Friday, as reported, a 66-year-old man's car was hit by a freight train and literally shredded. There have been repeated accidents at this crossing in the past. Five people even lost their lives, the last one in 2011. Nothing has improved since then.

I was in the garden when I noticed the noise and of course I went straight over," says Werner Höller, platoon commander at the Kefermarkt fire brigade, who lives right next to the level crossing. "When I went over, I realized that something more serious must have happened, but the driver of the car involved in the accident was already out of the vehicle. Then I alerted the firefighters," reports the 32-year-old, who subsequently led the firefighting operation.

Notorious level crossing
As reported, the collision occurred on Friday in Kefermarkt, in which a 66-year-old local driver collided with a freight train. But this was by no means the only incident at this unrestricted crossing on the Sumerauerbahn: it was only at the beginning of June that a ten-year-old boy crashed his bike into a train and was injured and taken to the Kepler Clinic in Linz.

Improvements overdue
In 2018, a driver had a guardian angel: her car was hit by a train and she was uninjured. Back in 2011, after the last of five fatal accidents at the crossing, the "death trap" was to be defused. In the 13 years since, the level crossing has remained as it was back then.