I seem to remember a school bus getting hit that way with many injuries (I think at least one fatality).
Edit:
Found it, seven fatalities.
Thanks. Very interesting reading and a very tragic event. It seems the interconnecting controls consist primarily of prioritising the traffic lights to clear the crossing once a train strikes in and the crossing warning sequence starts. This simple and effective measure was defeated by the unilateral provision of an additional pedestrian sequence by the highway authority which ate up most of warning time before the road traffic got moving. There had been no dialogue between the highway and railway authorities when the changes to the road signals were made, leaving an inherently unsafe installation.
In the UK we would never have a similar AHB type crossing in such a dangerous location. A specific requirement for the type here is the absence of road junctions nearby, which helps to ensure there's no blocking back of road traffic over the crossing. This effectively rules out AHBs in urban areas.
Our ABCL type crossings looks very similar to an AHB from a road user perspective however, and these CAN be found sometimes in more urban settings but only on local railways where there's no high speed non-stopping operations to be affected by the necessary speed limits. Rather like tramway level crossings, these are locally monitored by the train driver, so the approach speed must be restricted from the sighting point sufficiently to ensure the train can pull up clear if the crossing is seen to be obstructed.
AHBs, like the USA automatic barrier crossings, are not monitored visually by anybody at all prior to a train crossing, except perhaps by a helpless train driver with no chance of stopping just before striking a road vehicle. The principle of operation relies on road vehicles obeying the relatively short warning light sequence and quickly clearing the tracks after crossing.