Public interest groups often use the phrase "astro-turf" to refer to fake, industry-funded pseudo-grassroots groups that dress themselves up as legitimate public interest groups but parrot industry messages. The New York Times is reporting today on a nonprofit group called "Operation Lifesaver" which has many ties to the rail industry and has a railroad safety message that -- surprise! -- parrots the rail industry's arguments that the most important rail safety problems aren't the industry's failures to maintain working lights, signals, and gates but, instead, drivers who blunder across the tracks. Operation Lifesaver was co-founded by Union Pacific Railroad in Idaho in 1972 and quickly spread to other states through independent chapters. By 1986 there were many state chapters and the national version of Operation Lifesaver was incorporated by the Association of American Railroads, an industry trade association; Amtrak; and the Railway Progress Institute, a rail equipment supply group.... [Its board] now has 10 voting members - half of them from the industry. "We know what a tremendous success Operation Lifesaver Inc. has been," said Allan Rutter last fall before he stepped down as chief of the Federal Railroad Administration, which regulates the industry. The agency backs his words with taxpayer money; it has contributed $7 million since 1997. Two other agencies, the Federal Highway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, have collectively kicked in a similar amount. Even so, the Operation Lifesaver program pays scant attention to unsafe crossings. According to minutes of a 1992 meeting of Operation Lifesaver's development council, the signal-workers union notified the group that "warning device malfunctions are a factor in driver behavior at railroad crossings" and that the police should be told of this. The minutes show that the recommendation was unanimously rejected.... Check it out: Walt Bogdanich, "Safety Group Closely Echoes Rail Industry," N.Y. Times, Nov. 14, 2004.