In Stafford, residents won a campaign to overturn the closure of a level crossing footpath that led to an open space popular with young families. The protesters successfully argued before a council committee that without the crossing, children were having to travel along a dangerous road to reach the site.
All these groups say Network Rail and local authorities are being excessively cautious and failing to balance the level of risk posed by one or two deaths at a single crossing over a 40-year period against the cost to residents' day-to-day quality of life.
Up until now, however, Network Rail has largely attracted criticism for being too cavalier with level crossing safety, not too strict. In March, the Commons Transport Select committee said the company had shown a "callous disregard" for those bereaved by level crossing accidents.
MPs found that risk assessment documents had been withheld and victims had been described as trespassers or erroneous users of the railway, implying they were at fault for their own deaths or injuries, when in fact they had used crossings correctly.
The most publicised case involved, Charlotte Thompson, 13, and Olivia Bazlinton, 14, who died as they crossed the tracks at an unlocked gate at the crossing in Elsenham, Essex. They had already waited for one train to pass, but were struck by a second. In February 2011, evidence emerged of a report that had recommended installation of new gates that locked automatically in 2002 - three years before the girls' deaths - but this was not done until the summer of 2007.
In March, Network Rail's chief executive Mark Carne issued a "full and unreserved apology" for the company's past failings on level crossing safety.
"I completely understand where (the campaigners) are coming from," says Tina Hughes, Olivia Bazlington's mother. "All I can say is having a child killed at a level crossing is the most awful experience - you wouldn't wish it on anyone else."
Across Great Britain, Network Rail says it has around 6,200 level crossings currently in operation - most of them footpaths or "user-worked" crossings on farms or other private land. In 2013 10 people were accidentally killed on them. Northern Ireland has its own rail system.
Level crossings account for half of all fatalities on the railways, when suicides and trespasses are excluded, according to the House of Commons Transport Select Committee. However, the European Railway Agency reported in 2013, external that the UK's fatality risk at level crossings was the lowest in the EU. Greece, the worst performing country in the EU, had a fatality risk more than 28 times higher. Network Rail says it has reduced the risk of death at level crossings by 25% since 2008.
For Tregenza, a research scientist, all this is evidence that the dangers of crossings are being overstated. He calculates that, according to Network Rail's own model for assessing risk, his chance of being hit by a train at Mexico crossing is once every 23,000 years. "The council officer who inspected the crossing turned up on a motor bike," he says. "That's a far bigger risk - no-one said, 'You have to take a car, it's safer.'"
For its part, Cornwall Council says it received petitions both for and against closing the crossing and that a majority of elected members did not feel that they could go against professional advice that there was nothing that could be reasonably done to make it safe. Network Rail, however, says it is abiding by its overriding responsibility, which is to reduce risk on the railway.
"Our job is to make it as safe as possible," says spokeswoman Kate Snowden. "If we can close a level crossing, we will. From our point of view, we don't want to wait for something to happen and then have to react."
Snowden says the company always considers the potential dangers to pedestrians of moving them on to different thoroughfares and that it looks at the feasibility of replacements for pathways at level crossings including bridges and tunnels. This week a bridge was installed to replace Brock level crossing, near Bilsborrow in Lancashire, with the support of the local parish council.
In the last four years Network Rail has spent £130m improving level crossing safety including 38 new footbridges, 250 power-operated gate openers and 100 new level crossing managers. However, it isn't always judged practical or cost-effective to install a footbridge.
At the heart of the debate are differing judgements about what exactly constitutes an acceptable level of danger. "Nobody's right or wrong," says David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University.
"From a societal point of view it may be great if you eliminate risk. But from an individual point of view it may be more rational to accept that level of risk to maintain your quality of life."
In relation to public health, epidemiologists call this dynamic the prevention paradox. Now it underpins disputes about level crossings almost literally from Land's End to John O'Groats.
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