Basic Ledes: Analysis Or Opinion?

It's a fine line between using descriptive words justified by the facts and being sensational with little justification. This lede straddled that line:

There was a miraculous escape as a train struck a family of three's SUV at an unsafe intersection on Michigan Avenue near Wayne Boulevard on Monday afternoon.

First, is it fair to say it was miraculous? It it was your conclusion, probably. But the information you were given included, police said it was amazing no one was killed. So it wasn't you simply making a subjective conclusion; you were citing presumed experts on car crashes (and hopefully in the body of the story you would include a quote from police explicitly supporting that claim in the lede).

Now, was it fair to call the intersection unsafe? This was a bit dicier. The information you were given said there were no warning lights or a crossing gate, but there were warning signs and a stop sign.

So, is that necessarily unsafe? If later in your story you cited some sort of expert or experts (like cops or safety engineers) or other people in the know (frequent users of the intersection), saying it's unsafe and offering a justification of why it's unsafe, then I'd say you're in the right.

But while this is clearly a less-protected crossing, I think it's a leap to say it's unsafe, in lieu of additional information.