Deputies in Vanderburgh County, Indiana, will issue tickets rather than warnings to drivers who violate railroad crossing rules during Indiana Rail Safety Week, according to an announcement flagged by FOX5 Vegas.

The enforcement shift marks a change from the customary practice of issuing warnings during public-safety campaigns. Under the new approach, deputies will cite drivers who cross tracks illegally — whether by ignoring active warning devices, driving around lowered gates, or stopping on the tracks.

Indiana Rail Safety Week is a statewide initiative intended to reduce collisions between vehicles and trains at grade crossings. Enforcement blitzes of this kind typically pair deputy patrols at high-incident crossings with public messaging about the risks of violating crossing signals.

The stakes are concrete. A train cannot stop quickly — a freight train travelling at normal operating speeds can need a mile or more to come to a halt — and the overwhelming majority of collisions at crossings result from driver behaviour rather than equipment failure, according to safety regulators' long-standing findings.

For Vanderburgh County, home to Evansville and a network of freight lines serving the Ohio River corridor, crossing enforcement bears directly on both safety and rail operations. Collisions at grade crossings force track closures, delay freight movements, and trigger investigations that can shut a line for hours.

A citation-first policy also carries a direct cost outcome for drivers: fines for crossing violations in Indiana can run into the hundreds of dollars, and citations typically add points to a driver's record. Safety advocates argue that the certainty of a penalty, rather than the severity, is what changes driver behaviour at crossings.

The announcement did not specify which crossings in Vanderburgh County will receive targeted patrols, how many deputies will participate, or how long the ticket-only policy will remain in effect beyond the awareness week itself. County sheriff's offices running similar campaigns elsewhere have generally concentrated enforcement at crossings with a recorded history of collisions or near-misses.

Rail Safety Week initiatives across the United States are co-ordinated with freight railroads, short lines, and state safety offices, and often include participation from operators whose lines run through the enforcement jurisdictions. Police agencies in other Indiana counties have run comparable enforcement details in prior years.

Drivers in Vanderburgh County can expect the tightened enforcement to continue through the duration of Indiana Rail Safety Week, with the sheriff's office signalling that citations, not cautions, will be the default response to crossing violations during the campaign.