Even a good day after the accident with two dead, nothing at the Grossen-Linden train station reminds of the fateful minutes of Tuesday evening.

There are not even flowers on the platforms in memory of the victims.

The small train station not far from Gießen looks the same as ever.

Only a few passengers are waiting there for their train.

If you know about the incident, don't let it show.

At around 9:45 p.m. on Tuesday, a regional train traveling from Treysa to Frankfurt hit and fatally injured a 55-year-old woman from the Kassel area and her 20-year-old daughter.

Both women and the 19-year-old daughter had previously entered the tracks to catch a train on the other platform.

The regional train drove at around 160 kilometers per hour.

Thorsten Winter

Business editor and internet coordinator in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The police in central Hesse also have to move out again and again after such accidents.

This was last the case in the region in August 2020.

At that time, near Niederweimar near Marburg, a schoolgirl stepped onto the tracks behind a stationary train and was hit by a rushing train.

The federal police have counted 36 such accidents in Hesse since 2019, which were due to carelessness.

For 2016 alone, the State Statistical Office recorded 39 accidents with fatalities at train stations and crossings that the Federal Police did not register.

Information campaign on safety on tracks

In other federal states, accidents like the one in Grossen-Linden are to be lamented again and again.

In view of this and to raise awareness, Deutsche Bahn, in cooperation with the federal police, has launched a series of information campaigns.

They are aimed at adults as well as young people and children, to whom the little baseball cap wearer Oli shows how to travel safely by train and at train stations.

"Railway facilities are not a playground" is one campaign, "Safe over the level crossing" is another.

Deutsche Bahn has had a series of short, true-to-life videos made that can be viewed on YouTube and are intended to draw attention to the dangers.

They are as entertaining as they are haunting.

One message reads: "Please never step on the tracks.

Do not risk your life for a shortcut” – a well unanimous video ends with this appeal.

With the clip, Deutsche Bahn warns against stepping on the gas before the railway barriers close.

In another video, young people throw a backpack at each other across the tracks - until one of the young people is hit by a train, as the film suggests.

It seems obvious not to do that.

However, time and again people disregard such precautionary rules - and sometimes pay for this frivolity with their lives.

The railways and the federal police have therefore also formed special prevention teams.

"They draw attention to dangerous situations with stands at the train station, at railway facilities or in teaching units in schools or day-care centers",

They don't get involved by accident.

Dozens of deaths on railway systems throughout Germany every year are reason enough.

And: "Many underestimate the speed of the trains," says a spokesman for the central Hesse police headquarters, adding: "If the train is very close, then it's already too late." Because in such cases, people walking too close to the tracks would not have a chance engine driver.

The man at the controls of a train can trigger all the brakes;

if a train travels 160 kilometers per hour, as it did on Tuesday evening, it cannot stop in time, according to a spokesman for the federal police.