Chicago ? After determining that safety gates and lights at an Elmwood Park railroad crossing appeared to be working properly, federal investigators on Thursday suggested that a crash between a Metra train and several cars was caused by motorists who ignored warning signs and stopped on the tracks.

“Remember who drove the car into the crossing area. Who drove the car? The train didn’t drive there. It goes there. It can’t go anywhere else,” said Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, at a news conference. “The decision-making process was made by a driver. People have to be sensitive to the dangers of these rail crossings.”

The accident Wednesday evening has renewed questions about whether the crossing can be made more safe, perhaps by coordinating nearby traffic lights with the railroad crossing gates to allow drivers to clear from the tracks. But state officials said Thursday they decided about a decade ago not to coordinate the gates with traffic lights around the Elmwood Park crossing.

Although the engineer tried to stop the rush-hour train Wednesday, it smashed into five cars on the tracks, and those cars then caromed into 11 other vehicles, officials said.

The train was traveling about 65 mph when it hit the cars, and the crash injured at least 13 people, according to Metra officials. Three victims remained hospitalized Thursday, two with serious injuries.

“We were very, very lucky last night,” said Rosenker. “People could have died. When you look at the pictures of the automobiles that were crushed, it’s amazing that they weren’t.”

Investigators determined that the gates went down nearly a minute before impact, giving some drivers enough time to jump from their cars as some witnesses reported.

By ruling out a failure of the safety gates, investigators shifted their focus to whether the crossing should have included a system to coordinate the train and traffic signals, a safety measure designed to prevent cars from becoming trapped on the tracks during heavy traffic.

Rosenker told reporters that a coordinated signal system might have detected the oncoming train and overridden the traffic lights, allowing cars to get off the tracks in time. Witnesses have said that no cars went around the safety gates but were instead trapped on the tracks.