§392.10 requires drivers of specific CMVs — every bus and motorcoach, every vehicle hauling placarded hazardous materials, every cargo tank — to stop within 50 feet but no closer than 15 feet of every railroad grade crossing, then proceed only after listening and looking. The bigger consequence isn't the BASIC weight: a railroad-crossing violation is a §383.51(d) "railroad-highway grade crossing offense" that triggers escalating CDL disqualification.
Severity weight + CDL disqualification
Severity weight 5 in the Unsafe Driving BASIC. More importantly, §383.51(d) disqualifies the driver:
- 60 days for a first conviction
- 120 days for a second conviction within 3 years
- 1 year for a third within 3 years
The CDL disqualification flows to the carrier as a §391.15 disqualification — the driver cannot operate a CMV until the period elapses. Continued dispatch is auto-fail under the §385.321(b) table (items 8 and 11).
How to prevent it
- Identify every required-stop driver on your roster (passenger, hazmat, cargo tank).
- Cover §392.10 explicitly in orientation. Many drivers misremember the rule as "stop at every crossing" — it's selective.
- Map the routes against state railroad-crossing inventories so dispatch knows which crossings the regulation covers.
How Roadworthy HQ helps
A railroad-crossing conviction is a driver-record problem before it is anything else. Roadworthy HQ does not record individual violation codes, pull CSA or SMS scores, or track coaching. What it keeps is the driver file an auditor opens next: the annual MVR and the §391.25 annual review, each with reminders 60, 30, and 7 days out, and the qualification-file documents with their retention periods enforced. If the citation came from a roadside inspection, log that inspection on the vehicle (date, state, level, driver, number of violations, out-of-service or not). If a conviction disqualifies the driver, setting the driver's status to Disqualified sends a critical alert. It is a status and an alert; Roadworthy HQ has no dispatch system to block.