The railway crossing on La Vallée Road in Memramcook is on Transport Canada's list of the 500 riskiest rail crossings in the country.

The crossing has no barriers and the view of any train approaching from the direction of Dorchester is obscured by a house and bushes.

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Caption: This railway crossing at La Vallée Road in Memramcook is No.187 on Transport Canada's list of the highest risk crossings in the country. (CBC)

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With no barriers in place, vehicles sometimes race through it, even when red lights are flashing, according to Guy Bourgeois, owner of the Memramcook Auto Service located right next to the crossing.

"I mean some people they go by the red light," he said.

"Some of them try to race past. I think this might have been the accident there. I think he might have tried to race the train," said Bourgeois.

The accident Bourgeois is referring to happened several years ago when the rear end of a car was completely separated from the front after a train hit the car. The driver was not hurt, but Bourgeois says accidents are common at the crossing.

Area resident Jacqueline Bourgeois says there is a lot of traffic on the road, especially during rush hour, as La Vallée ​Road is frequented by people travelling between Dieppe and Dorchester.

"It is the main road coming from Dieppe. With all the people coming from the Dorchester penitentiary, there was quite a bit of volume ... There is a bridge there also and there are no gates."

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Caption: Another view of the crossing, looking onto the bridge. (CBC)

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Transport Canada has initiated new standards for rail crossings and is working to identify which crossings don't meet the new guidelines.

Currently, there are just over 17,000 public rail crossings in Canada — 17 per cent have gates, 22 per cent have just bells and lights, while the remainder (slightly more than half) have no automated warnings at all, only a white, reflective X crossing sign, at times accompanied by a stop sign, according to data maintained by Natural Resources Canada.

Since 2000, there have been more than 460 people killed at rail crossings according to data from the Transportation Safety Board.

After years of discussion between railways, municipalities and Transport Canada, the federal government in 2014 passed new regulations to require some upgrades across Canada, but existing crossings aren't required to meet these new safety standards until 2021.

Along with Memramcook, there are three other crossings that made the risky list in New Brunswick:

Jenelle Saskiw, chair of the standing committee on Municipal Infrastructure and Transportation Policy for the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, is working with Transport Canada on the project to identify dangerous railway intersections.

"Between 2009 and 2013 we had an average of 26 deaths and 26 injuries involving people and that's just too many," said Saskiw.

"So we have to work together with all the different partners to ensure that we don't have these tragedies occur across the country any more," she said.