RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - America's railroads want five more years to stop train wrecks using a high-tech system costing more than $9 billion.

But experts tell The Associated Press that it won't keep trains and trucks from crashing together unless both industries use a common-sense solution available right away: actually talking with each other before crossing into each other's territory.

Plenty of fingers have been pointed since an Amtrak train slammed into a massive tractor-trailer in North Carolina this month, injuring 55 people.

No one warned the railroad beforehand that a huge truckload could be in the way.

But as it turns out, no one had to.

"It is crazy that this doesn't get coordinated with the railroad, considering how difficult this operation can be and how long it takes to cross it," Rob Molloy, acting director of highway safety for the National Transportation Safety Board, told the AP on Tuesday.

Unfortunately, no federal law or regulation backed by stiff criminal or civil penalties specifically requires coordination between truck and train operators, the AP found after reviewing state and federal regulations and safety recommendations and interviewing dozens of experts.

About a third of the states, including North Carolina, don't require it, either.

"There's no state or federal law that says someone has to call," North Carolina DOT spokesman Steve Abbott confirmed.

No one involved has taken any public responsibility for failing to coordinate the Halifax crossing in advance: not drivers of the truck or its pilot and chase cars, not the trooper escorting the load, not the trucking company, nor the state transportation agency officials who approved the planned route and required that a copy be shared with the State Highway Patrol.

No one in this chain was tasked with making another copy for the railroad, or calling CSX Transportation Inc. dispatchers to warn approaching trains to go slow.

Trucks get in accidents at highway-rail crossings about 10 times a week in the U.S., federal regulators say. Of these, supersized loads can be particularly challenging: An Associated Press review of news coverage found oversized tractor-trailers were hit at least 20 times in 2013 and 2014.

"If you are trying to take an unexpected or surprising or complicated load over railroad tracks ... you should be letting the railroad know you are planning to do that and coordinating," said Sarah Feinberg, acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration.

The FRA rules the rails and the Federal Highway Administration runs the roads, but each focuses on its own domain.

In the absence of shared regulations that govern where rails meet roads, highway regulators have issued "best practices" guidelines, suggesting that pilot car drivers "make advance contact with the railroad if in doubt that the load can safely negotiate the crossing."

Train-truck crashes, by the numbers

• Frequency of "incidents" involving trucks in railroad crossings nationwide each week: 10

• Number of federal laws specifically requiring railroads be informed before oversized truckloads cross tracks: 0

• Number of years the National Transportation Safety Board campaigned to make truck drivers responsible for warning railroads before giving up: 12

• Cost of requiring trucking companies to share permitted routes with railroads: Negligible

• Cost of Positive Train Control, the high-tech alternative promoted by railroads: $15 billion

• Mandated deadline for implementing Positive Train Control: End of 2015

• Extension railroad industries are pushing for: 2020.

• Number of accidents the NTSB says this high-tech system could have prevented during the 47 years it has been pushing for it: 144

• Number of injuries: 6,500

• Fatalities: 300

• Number of truck-train collisions that Positive Train Control can prevent if railroads aren't told to slow trains down before oversized tractor-trailers try to cross: 0