Explain the
purpose of Operation Lifesaver and its mission.
The Operation Lifesaver website is a good resource for rail safety information. You should start by reading the main page, and the Mission page. (Hint: Their mission is composed of three words that start with the letter E, and your answer should cover all three of them.)
Operation Lifesaver instructs teachers about how to instruct rail safety in their classes. This program includes training teachers and other professionals who can then teach railroad-related safety in schools, including driving instruction classes.
Operation Lifesaver doesn't create or enforce the laws governing rail safety. They do arrange for public safety staff (Law enforcement, Firefighters, Paramedics) and legal professionals to ride in the cab of locomotives as the engineers perform their jobs taking the trains from point to point. This allows these professionals to see how often cars and other hazards encroach on the railroads right-of-way every day. They hope that these professionals will understand how rare a train accident is versus the frequency of near-collisions. They also hope that seeing how often these near-collisions occur, perhaps officers will enforce the existing laws, perhaps judges will hand down stiffer penalties.
Operation Livesaver also examines the accident reports from collissions, and they try to understand whether engineering changes might have prevented some of the collissions. They then work with companies who already make safety devices. to try to encuorage them to make devices better, and they encourage the railroads to adopt new safety devices and techniques.
There are currently 120 active merit badges that can be earned by Boy Scouts today, and scouts can find information about all of these on the Internet at the Merit Badge Research Center (MBRC) website, including the Railroading merit badge requirements. The MBRC has worksheets for most of the current merit badges.