SAN FRANCISCO — Following directions from Google Maps on a smartphone last year, Jose Alejandro Sanchez-Ramirez turned a Ford truck, hauling a trailer, where he thought the app was telling him to go. But he ended up stuck on the railroad tracks at a poorly marked California crossing.

Soon after Mr. Sanchez-Ramirez abandoned the truck, a commuter train barreled into it, killing the engineer and injuring 32 others.

On Monday, after investigating the crash for almost two years, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a safety recommendation asking technology and delivery companies to add the exact locations of more than 200,000 grade crossings into digital maps and to provide alerts when drivers encounter them.

The crash involving Mr. Sanchez-Ramirez’s truck — on Feb. 24, 2015, in Oxnard, Calif. — was one of the more than 200 fatalities that took place at a grade crossing, where road and railway lines are at the same level, in the United States last year. What made this crash stand out was the possible role of digital mapping technology in taking a driver down a wrong path. This was the first time the safety board has targeted navigation apps as a factor in a major accident.