[toast0]

> I also find it amusing that all of the stories regarding train-car interactions seem to occur at crossings with modern signaling devices, rather than "at your own discretion" crossings in the middle of nowhere.

A large part of this is due to population density (or trip density) around the crossing. If you've got 1000x the number of trips on a crossing, a 100x safer crossing is still 10x more likely to result in a colission. Fill in your own estimates, as my numbers are clearly made up. Also, guidelines require more signalling in built up / dense areas, and at intersections with a history of colissions.

Additionally, if you have a colission at an unguarded intersection, the response is often to consider a guard, and if it happens again, the story is 'senseless officials refuse to put in guard' rather than 'sensless person disobeys guard and is injured/causes confusion and delay'