POMPANO BEACH, Fla — A driver was fatally injured early Monday when a Brightline higher speed train hit a vehicle on the railroad tracks near Fort Lauderdale, officials said.
The crash happened just after 5:30 a.m. Monday in Pompano Beach, the Broward Sheriff's Office said in a news release. Television video footage showed what appeared to be a mangled pickup truck on the tracks.
Jacob Bresnahan, 27, was taken to a hospital with critical injuries, the release said. Deputies reported later Monday afternoon that Bresnahan had died.
Brightline did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the crash.
Brightline has the worst fatality rate in the nation, according to an ongoing Associated Press analysis of Federal Railroad Administration data that began in 2019. Its trains have fatally struck at least 58 people since beginning test runs in 2017, an average of about one death every 33,000 miles.
Central Florida’s SunRail has the second-worst rate among railroads that operate at least 100,000 miles annually – its trains have fatally struck someone every 105,000 miles since 2017. More than 800 railroads operate in the U.S.
