SACRAMENTO-

It wasn’t suicide or drunkenness that took the life of Andrea Mrotz. It wasn’t that she was someplace unfamiliar. The collision with a train that killed her was purely accidental, says her mother.

And she says it was an accident that could have been avoided.

“The trains can go left or right- on either track, in either direction. Most people don’t know that. I certainly didn’t,” Patricia Haman, Mrotz’s mother, told FOX40.

Mrotz was killed last November trying to board a train at the Amtrak station in Davis. It’s a center platform, meaning passengers wait to board between two tracks.

Wednesday, in front of the Capital Corridor Joint Powers Authority, Haman argued that it’s an outdated configuration, despite maintenance that was done after Mrotz’s accident to improve warning signs.

“It’s a terrible tragedy,”Steve Hansen, Sacramento City Councilman who serves on the rail oversight board, said. “As we update our equipment, we need to look for ways to make things safer.”

Haman says she’ll keep calling for changes- activism in honor of her daughter, who was an activist herself. Mrotz was a UC Davis microbiology graduate who started community gardens, protested GMO foods and founded a youth sailing club- all in a life cut far too short.

“There’s not a day goes by that we don’t miss her,” Haman said.