Westchester County officials reported that a driver got stuck between railroad crossing gates, which are not far from a rail crossing in New York where a fiery crash between a train and another car killed six people last month.

Cynthia Parent was caught between the safety gate and the tracks just before 11 am Saturday when the gate's arm came down on the back of her vehicle, Chrysler PT Cruiser.

According to Parent, she was driving behind a gray car whose driver came to the tracks and looked both ways before crossing. When she drove up to cross the tracks, the gate arm came down on top of her car. However, she quickly backed up, snapped the gate arm and freed her car.

Parent said, "It happened within seconds. I saw the train coming. The first thing I thought was to back up. I was close to the tracks, not on them. I didn't think about getting out of the car. I just backed up.

Metro-North employees tested the crossing signals and replaced the safety arm. The 67-year-old Mount Vernon, N. Y. woman was issued a ticket for obstructing a highway-railroad grade crossing. Parent said that she had crossed the tracks many times and used to drive over the tracks every day to take her son to and from high school.

She mentioned that she is aware of the crossing near from the Metro-North station in Valhalla, where an SUV was hit by a train on the tracks. The driver and five passengers on the train were killed, making the worst crash in the railroad's history.

On Monday, US Reps. Nita Lowey, a Democrat from Harrison, N. Y., and Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat from Cold Spring has gone to the crossing to order safety improvements at rail crossings.