Railway crossing collision avoidance system

DETAILED DESCRIPTION With the system of the present invention, road vehicles in the vicinity of a railway crossing are informed of a train approaching the crossing.
In a first embodiment of the invention, a signalling device located in the train emits a signal to a receiver located at the railway crossing to provide an indication of the rail vehicle's location with respect to the railway crossing.
The signal is sent continuously at predetermined intervals to provide the railway crossing with sufficient data to estimate the velocity and time of arrival of the train or railway vehicle at the crossing.
The railway crossing processes the information and transmits an alarm signal to approaching road vehicles if a potential collision is detected.
The signal emitted by the crossing is received at the road vehicle which provides various levels of alarms depending on how close the rail vehicle is to the crossing.
In another embodiment of the invention, the train or railway vehicle derives a velocity and time of arrival of the train at an oncoming crossing.
An alarm signal is emitted from a transmitter on the train so as to be received by approaching road vehicles.
The location coordinates of the oncoming railway crossing from which the velocity and time of arrival of the train can be derived, is either pre-stored at a train's onboard processor or each railway crossing transmits its location coordinates to oncoming trains.
According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a railroad crossing collision avoidance system for alerting a road vehicle approaching a railroad crossing of an oncoming rail vehicle, comprising: tracking means on said rail vehicle to determine said rail vehicle's position with respect to said railroad crossing; transmitter means responsive to said tracking means for transmitting tracking data indicative of the location of said rail vehicle from said railroad crossing; first receiver means at said railroad crossing for receiving said transmitted tracking data; processor means at said railroad crossing for calculating the velocity and arrival time of said rail vehicle in response to said tracking data; and transmitter means at said railroad crossing responsive to said processor means for transmitting an alarm signal to an approaching road vehicle, said alarm signal being indicative of the velocity and time of arrival of a rail vehicle at said railroad crossing