Note 220 — CULBERTSON v. CRESCENT CITY RAILROAD CO. Supreme Court, Louisiana, April 6, 1896. Reported in 48 Louisiana Annual Reports, Part 2, 1376.
Reading edition
Birmingham R. Co. v. Brantley, 141 Ala. 614; Baltimore Traction Co. v. Wallace, 77 Md. 435; Lassiter v. Raleigh R. Co., 133 N. C. 244; Memphis R. Co. v. Haynes, 112 Tenn. 712 Accord.
“Let us view this subject in a more concrete form. The last railroad statistics I have been able to find were issued by the Interstate Commerce Commission for the year 1906.
[The learned judge then copies a table from the report referred to and proceeds.]
It will be observed that while the road mileage and train mileage in Canada are each ten per cent of the entire road system and the entire train mileage, the number of trespassers injured or killed in that country was only three per cent of the total number; while in this State the road mileage is twenty-six per cent of the total road mileage and the train mileage twenty-five per cent of the total train mileage, forty-eight per cent of the total number of trespassers injured or killed were injured or killed in Missouri.
Illinois has thirty per cent of the road mileage and thirty-two per cent of the train mileage, and only twenty per cent of the total number of trespassers injured or killed were injured or killed in that State.
It is important to know both the train mileage and the road mileage, for the reason the greater number of trains that are run over a given road mileage the greater number of fatalities to trespassers will result. The train mileage, therefore, in the various States offers the most accurate basis for comparison.
A computation will show that one trespasser was killed for every eighty-one miles of road in Canada; for every seventeen miles in Michigan; for every forty-two miles in Ohio; for every thirty-one miles in Indiana; for every forty-six miles in Illinois; for every seventeen miles in Missouri; and for every forty-one miles in Iowa.
It will be observed that the number of miles for each trespasser killed in Missouri and Michigan is the same. This results, however, from the fact that the line from Chicago, St. Louis, and other points converging at Montpelier, Ohio, and thence all the traffic eastward goes over the one hundred and five miles of line located in the State of Michigan. The effect of this is also shown in the train mileage. Thus, while Michigan has only four per cent of road mileage, it has one-third or six per cent of the train mileage. The population along the Michigan mileage is very dense; about five miles of the line from Delray to Detroit run through a very densely populated district—practically a city.
It should also be noted that while Illinois has greater road and train mileage than Missouri, only sixteen trespassers were injured or killed while walking on tracks in that State, where thirty-nine persons were killed or injured while walking on the track in Missouri. If we also consider the more dense population of Illinois, the figures become more startling. And if we should extend these figures in the same proportion to all of the railroads of the State and country, we would then see the appalling number of trespassers killed and injured annually on account of this inhuman doctrine, which is approximately 7750.
In so far as I have been able to ascertain, the courts of all the other States than this hold that persons who walk upon railroad tracks do so at their peril, and I am thoroughly satisfied and convinced that this fact accounts for the small number of fatalities to track-walkers in those States as compared with Missouri; and by parity of reasoning I am also convinced that if said section 1105 was strictly enforced, as it should be, the contrast between those States and this would not be near so great as it is now; and that if we had a statute like that of Canada, making it a crime for persons to walk upon railroad tracks, then the percentage of fatalities to track-walkers in this State would fall still lower than what it is in any of the States mentioned. Such a policy and such a statute would exclude from the railroads all pedestrians, and thereby save this great sacrifice of life and limb, as well as the pecuniary loss incident thereto.” Woodson, J. (dissenting), in Murphy v. Wabash Railroad Company, 228 Mo. 56, 88, 108.
See also the observations of Professor Clark in University of Missouri Bulletin, Law Series, No. 12, 34–39.