One person has been killed and 20 others injured, four of them seriously, after an Intercity train struck a concrete mixer truck at a level crossing in central Poland and derailed on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Donald Tusk called for tougher rules and bigger penalties for drivers who ignore red lights and dodge barriers at railway crossings. The fatality was among seven people hospitalized following the incident, according to the air ambulance service. The train from the eastern city of Lublin to the northwestern city of Szczecin hit the vehicle near Sokolniki Suche, in the Przysucha area about 100 km south of Warsaw, at around 11:25 a.m., Polish media reported. The seriously injured included the driver of the concrete mixer truck and the train driver, police said. The truck driver was trapped in the vehicle but was freed by firefighters, a fire service spokesman told the Interia news outlet. The locomotive tipped onto its side on the opposite track, while several carriages also derailed and partially overturned, the spokesman said. The train consisted of six carriages and a locomotive and was carrying about 120 passengers, rail operator PKP Intercity said. Two air ambulances and around 30 fire crews were among the emergency services deployed to the scene. Speaking after the crash, Tusk said the government would begin urgent work on a “radical tightening” of rules in order to discourage drivers from entering railway crossings when barriers are coming down or red warning lights are flashing. “This has to stop,” he said, adding that neither previous accidents nor appeals to drivers had worked. Deputy Infrastructure Minister Piotr Malepszak said the broader problem lay with driver training. ‘Deadly-threat’ drivers He told private news broadcaster TVN24 that professional drivers operating 30 or 40-tonne vehicles could become a “deadly threat” to themselves, train drivers and passengers if they ignored the risks at crossings. Malepszak also said the driver of the concrete-mixer truck had initially claimed he was blinded by the sun in Wednesday’s accident, but that investigators would have to verify that account. “Very often in incidents like this, drivers explain themselves in this way,” he added.
