New video shows Metra trains nearly hitting cars due to crossing gate malfunction

Metra has responded to shocking close calls at a broken crossing gate in the south suburbs.

Metra officials call the problem disheartening, but are vowing to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Not just one crossing gate malfunction, but three all within an hour and half of each other on a snowy November morning in south suburban Mokena.

“The fact that it failed in the first place, that was disheartening,” said Jim Derwinski of Metra.

The problem became public last month when a Mokena police dashcam video was released showing a vehicle and the police cruiser almost colliding with a Rock Island commuter train at 191st Street.

Video released from Metra shows one train approaching the crossing, the warning lights and gates were not activated, and one driver drove across the tracks just two seconds before the train went through at 49 miles per hour.

About thirty minutes later, another train approached and the gates operated but not properly. They can be seen on video going up and back down again.

Metra officials say in one of those cases, the engineer said nothing about the problem.

“We can't be in that engineer's head, but that was disheartening,” Derwinski said.

And lastly, the train from the police dashcam incident arrived at 191st Street, the lights and gates were not on and a driver slipped through in front of the train, which was traveling at 52 miles per hour.

Metra says the electrical short giving train engineers the green light to proceed was fixed that day and since then, Metra officials have put a new rule in place.

“The engineer would only be allowed by rule to operate at restricted speed 20 miles per hour which would give them a much greater handling opportunity if in fact they recognized the crossing gates had not gone down,” Derwinski said.

Metra says they are looking into disciplinary action for the engineer who didn't report the problem.