Cedar Rapids Police caught a few, but not all, of the drivers not stopping properly at railroad crossings Tuesday morning.

Police and the Union Pacific Railroad conducted a sting operation for a few hours. Officers rode a train engine back and forth, about a mile and a half, through downtown.

After just the first run, officers saw about 16 violations. They were only able to issue two tickets, though. Police didn't have enough officers on hand to catch the other law breakers.

In all, law enforcement wrote five tickets to drivers. Each ticket is $330 for not properly stopping at a railroad crossing.

"Every time that we do it, we always have violations,” said Officer Loren Culver. “People pull up and carelessly cross the railroad crossing, even if the lights are flashing. Doesn't seem to matter how close the train is."

Culver said vehicles have to stop completely when the flashing red lights kick on. If it's safe to cross, meaning a train isn't bearing down on the intersection, drivers can go ahead.

The downtown rail intersections are called “active” crossings. That's because they have lights and bells, others have barricades.

“Passive” crossings just have the “X” signs, called crossbucks. They’re often in rural areas.

You might think the “actives” are safer. However, Union Pacific Representative John Simpson said the stats don't really show that. He said “active” intersections obviously do a better job alerting drivers, but collisions still happen.

“One would think that a crossing with lights and gates would eliminate collisions at that crossing,” said Simpson. “You might be surprised to know, half the collisions are at crossings that have flashing lights and or gates installed.”

Here's some positive news. Deaths involving trains are down nationally, and continue to drop. Collisions involving vehicles, those are down too.

Bad news, collisions involving people on the tracks are climbing, according to Simpson.