In the garage of his auto shop, Greg Kennamore can hear a train long before he sees it.

He works just down the street from the railroad crossing on Fondren at Main.

“It’s probably way up at South Main and Hillcroft right now.  When it gets here, it’s going to be blowing a lot louder than that,” Kennamore said.

In the U.S., a person or vehicle is hit by a train almost every two hours.

It’s an alarming statistic – a fact that most people don’t know.

“It’s horrible and unnecessary,” John Fabry, an attorney who represents victims’ families, said.

There are more than 10,000 railroad crossings in the state, and Fabry says about half of them have no signs or gates.

“The driver is always on the losing end of that collision,” Fabry said.

In fact, Texas leads the nation in the number of collisions and fatalities.

And many of those accidents happen in Houston.

Using a special computer program, 11 News was able to determine the five most dangerous crossings in the area for the past three years.

Among them are the crossing at Fondren and Main and the crossing at Chimney Rock and Main, both in southwest Houston.

And both are right down the street from Greg Kennamore’s shop.

But Kennamore says it isn’t just the crossings that are dangerous – it’s the reckless drivers too.

“After the crossbucks go down, I’ve seen people pick them up and allow a car to go through,” he said.

On the northeast side of town, the crossings at FM 1960 and FM 2100 and Airport and Mykawa, just north of the Harris-Brazoria County border, were also in the top five.

But the worst of all is the crossing at Hillcroft and Main in southwest Houston. 

Trains and cars have collided there four different times in the last few years.

Fabry says the numbers are frightening, adding that while drivers have a responsibility for safety, so do the railroad companies.

“It is my firm belief that they should be doing everything possible to warn motorists that they are coming down the track,” he said.

It costs about $150,000 to install lights or gates.  Federal tax dollars pick up 90 percent of the bill, while the state picks up the remaining ten percent.

But what about the railroad companies themselves?

“The railroad typically contributes absolutely nothing to that installation,” Fabry said.

In separate statements, BNSF and Union Pacific both said they spend tens of millions of dollars maintaining and repairing lights and gates at public crossings and reminding drivers that education is the key to safety.

That way, whenever drivers meet a public crossing, they know exactly what’s coming.