As I was perusing the headlines on the news wires April 28 — something I do every morning to keep up with rail industry doings — I noticed this one from the AP: “Driver, 3 Children Unharmed After Train Hits Car in North Florida.”

The AP reported that a “train hit a car carrying three children” near Live Oak, Fla., on April 27. Thankfully, there were no injuries to the 27-year-old driver or her 6-, 3- and 1-year-old children.

The Florida Highway Patrol said the sport utility vehicle failed to stop at the crossing guard arms, the second paragraph states. A Union Pacific Railroad train then hit the front end of the vehicle on the tracks.

Obviously, the driver was at fault, as gathered in the second paragraph. But the AP chose to say “after train hits car” instead of “after car impedes train” in the headline and lead with “train hit a car carrying three children” rather than “sport utility vehicle failed to stop.” I’m sure (at least, I think I’m sure) the AP didn’t mean anything by phrasing the headline or structuring the news item that way. But I’ve seen many headlines and read many articles like this over the years that paint railroads as the accident causer — oftentimes, much more dramatically than this case.

Anyone in the rail industry will tell you railroads get a bum rap in the press, getting practically no coverage for local or national events that warrant it — such as a short line that upgraded its track or the Railroad Day on Capitol Hill — and a lot of coverage for events not of their doing, a la the Florida crossing accident. Most local and national media don’t have much, if any, knowledge about the rail industry, railroaders say.

The Association of American Railroads and grassroots organizations like GoRail try to get the word out that railroads have made and continue to make strides to improve safety, especially at crossings. But I expect the “after train hits car” headlines and articles to keep sprouting up in newspapers and on news wires unless more railroads can get their local media and other oulets to understand how and why they operate they way the do. And stress that they’ve taken great care to upgrade crossings to protect citizens, who are the ones putting locomotive engineers and conductors in danger if they violate crossing laws.