Loretta Aliotta, widow and executor of the estate of Joseph Aliotta, appeals an adverse judgment in a wrongful death lawsuit against the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak), the Illinois Central Railroad Company (IC) and Gary Gilmer, an Amtrak engineer. A jury verdict was entered against her in the Northern District of Illinois after the case was removed to federal court by Amtrak. 1 Loretta argues that she was unfairly prejudiced by certain rulings on evidence and jury instructions. Finding critical jury instructions to be inadequate statements of Illinois law, we reverse and remand for a new trial.
I.
Joseph Aliotta, a 69 year-old former nurse’s aide, lived with his wife Loretta in Watseka, Illinois, a town just south of Kankakee near the Amtrak route between Chicago and Carbondale. Two to three times a year for about fifteen years, Joseph would take the train north from nearby Gilman to Chicago to visit his sisters. Two passenger trains operate northbound between Gilman and Chicago, an evening local train from Carbondale to Chicago and a morning express train which originates in New Orleans. In late 1996, Amtrak changed its schedules, and the express train no longer stopped at Gilman.
On July 30, 1997, Joseph Aliotta called Amtrak to find out when the train to Chicago would be at Gilman station, and was *759 told 7:30. Unfortunately for Joseph, this turned out to be the scheduled stop for the evening train. Doubly unfortunately for Joseph, the morning train would pass through Gilman almost precisely twelve hours earlier, but without stopping.
On the morning of July 31, Loretta drove her husband to the Amtrak station. After standing with him for a while on the platform, she went back to her car and waited for him to board the train. The train came and passed, without stopping, and she found Joseph dead about 180 feet down the tracks from the platform. What exactly happened to Joseph was a matter of dispute at the trial. Witnesses for the plaintiff said that Joseph was standing on an “island platform” along which the train whizzed by, suggesting that Joseph was impacted by the side of the train or was somehow “sucked under.” This platform, the plaintiff argued, is dangerously narrow to stand on while trains are passing, and there were no signs warning passengers not to stand there when waiting for trains. Witnesses for the defendants (the engineers on the passing train) said that Joseph was actually crossing the tracks in front of the train, and was hit head-on.
One defense witness, Thomas Prender-gast, a Risk Manager for the defendant IC, stated during his deposition that high-speed trains create dangerous vacuums along and near their sides, which can potentially suck bystanders to their deaths. The trial judge refused to allow this testimony into evidence on the ground that it neither met the requirements for expert testimony under Fed.R.Evid. 702 nor was admissible as an admission of a party-opponent under Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2). The plaintiff appeals the exclusion of Pren-dergast’s statements on the ground that they qualified as admissions under Fed. R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(D). The plaintiff also appeals the trial judge’s exclusion, on the ground that there was a danger of unfair prejudice, of a photograph of the deceased’s battered body. Fed.R.Evid. 403. The plaintiff contends that the condition of the body is probative of its position when struck by the train.
Finally, the plaintiff finds fault with several of the jury instructions relating to the appropriate duties of care to be exercised by the parties.
II.
We review a district court’s evidentiary rulings for an abuse of discretion.
United States v. Colston,
A.
In his deposition, Thomas Prendergast, Risk Manager for the IC, made statements highly damaging to his employer’s interests:
Well, the train is so large, it creates a vacuum right next to the train. And that vacuum will pull a person towards the train who is standing too close. You would think it would blow you away *760 from the train, ... [b]ut it’s just the opposite. It would actually pull you in closer to the train. If you were standing within a few feet of a passenger train going 79 miles an hour, there’s a very good chance that you would be killed. Even though you would be trying to resist that, falling near the train, you would be pulled right in.
Certainly, [you] would be pulled in if the train went by that station at 79 miles an hour and [you] were standing on the yellow line or any closer than that yellow line, certainly [you] would be pulled into the train and a good chance that [you] would be injured.
Prendergast Dep. at 46-47, 51. According to the plaintiffs witnesses, Joseph Aliotta was standing on an “island platform” which had tracks running on both sides but was only five feet wide, too narrow even to bother painting yellow warning lines (as such lines would leave a pathetically narrow space in which to stand). This “vacuum theory” (apparently related scientifically to the Bernoulli effect) as presented by Prendergast became the plaintiffs principal theory of Joseph’s demise and a key component of her attempt to show as negligent those responsible for building the platform and failing to instruct passengers not to stand on it while waiting for trains.
The defendants made a motion in limine to preclude the plaintiff from presenting Prendergast’s testimony at trial, resting their argument on two grounds: Prender-gast is not qualified to offer expert scientific testimony under Fed.R.Evid. 702 and
Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc.,
1.
Perhaps recognizing the significant hurdle for expert testimony of complying with the
Daubert
standards, the plaintiff fairly early on gave up trying to qualify Prender-gast as an expert witness. Indeed, she never even took the procedural step of disclosing him as an expert, Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(a)(2), and does not appeal the district court’s ruling that Prendergast in fact does not qualify. We briefly note that this ruling, excluding the deposition testimony as non-expert scientific testimony (having scant indicia of reliability), was correct. The district court took into consideration, among other things, a defendant-submitted report by an engineer demonstrating that any “vacuum effect” would be so slight that a person could not possibly be “sucked in.” At a subsequent hearing, Prendergast also backed away from his emphatic deposition claim, explaining that there was no written documentation he could find, from the IC or elsewhere, of the danger of being sucked into the side of a train. Given the scientific nature of
*761
Prendergast’s statements, and their evident unreliability, the defendants’ motion in limine was properly granted.
Daubert,
Prendergast’s deposition testimony was thus excluded on the ground that it was scientific evidence but unreliable; the exclusion was not an application of the hearsay rule. Nonetheless, the plaintiff argues that the evidence should be admitted as an admission under Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2)(D).
2
But there are complications in this approach. Rule 801(d)(2), on its face, merely defines as non-hearsay certain hearsay-like evidence. The plaintiff directs us to the widely accepted rule that admissions of a party-opponent under Rule 801(d)(2) are accorded generous treatment in determinations of admissibility.
See, e.g.,
Fed.R.Evid. 801 advisory committee note (stating that “[n]o guarantee of trustworthiness is required in the case of an admission” and that admissions enjoy “freedom ... from the restrictive influences of the opinion rule and the rule requiring first-hand knowledge”);
Russell v. United Parcel Serv.,
In this connection, there are' two relevant requirements under Rule 801(d)(2)(D). First, Prendergast’s deposition testimony must be an admission. Second, the statements must be made “concerning a matter within the scope” of Prendergast’s employment.
3
Prendergast’s deposition testimony easily meets the first requirement. To qualify as an admission, no specific “against interest” component is required.
See United States v. McGee,
Thus, we must ask whether the admission was made within the scope of Pren-dergast’s employment. The law in this area is somewhat muddled because the great bulk of cases interpreting what is within an employee’s “scope of employment” deals with employment discrimina
*762
tion. In those cases, many courts, including the Seventh Circuit in
Williams v. Pharmacia, Inc.,
We agree, however, with the plaintiff that this is a mistaken reading of the case law. Rule 801(d)(2)(D) admissions can be made “concerning [any] matter within the scope of the ... employment.” See Fed.R.Evid. 801 advisory committee note, 1972 Proposed Rules (noting that since “few principals employ agents for the purpose of making damaging statements,” admissible admissions may be made as to all matters within the scope of the agency or employment and include more than just statements made in circumstances meeting “the usual test of agency”). While the hiring/firing/promoting/demoting decision-making authority of the declarant may be critical in employment cases in which the admission deals with hiring/firing/promoting/demoting-type decisions, no similar requirement exists in other contexts. The only requirement is that the subject matter of the admission match the subject matter of the employee’s job description.
It clarifies matters to consider how “scope of employment” is defined in other tort claims. To qualify an admission, an employee need only be performing the duties of his employment when he comes in contact with the particular facts at issue.
See Polec v. Northwest Airlines (In re Air Crash Disaster),
Prendergast’s statements were made within the scope of his employment. Pren-dergast’s job is to investigate accidents, and in doing so, he speaks with other railroad employees in determining the causes and potential causes of train accidents. The “vacuum theory” was knowledge he had acquired during the course of his job. Now, if he had said in his deposition that Joseph had died by being sucked into the side of the Amtrak train, that statement, being a conclusion, may arguably lie just outside of the scope of his employment — his job did not entail, according to the record, drawing such conclusions from the facts he gathered. General information about the causes of train *763 accidents, however, is knowledge and experience gathered and utilized on his job. Further, we do not believe that the fact that the information here is somewhat scientific in nature defeats the fact that it was made within the scope of his employment. While Prendergast is not employed as a scientist, general scientific or mechanical knowledge is undoubtedly learned and applied in the course of his job investigating accidents. Thus, we believe that Pren-dergast’s statements are not hearsay under Rule 801(d)(2)(D) and might, if there were no other objections, be admitted as admissions against the IC.
The question remains whether there are other objections. The plaintiff would have us hold that, as an 801(d)(2) admission, the testimony is admissible regardless of certain other considerations. The 1972 Advisory Committee Notes to Rule 801 quoted above do suggest that admissions are sometimes free from the lay opinion limitations of Rule 701 and the personal knowledge requirement of Rule 602. However, the rules calling for generous treatment of party-opponent admissions still do not stand for the proposition that Rule 801(d)(2) trumps
all other
Federal Rules of Evidence. For example, Rule 403 clearly applies to admissions, and a trial judge can exclude admission evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.
See United States v. Zizzo,
2.
Prendergast’s testimony may be inaccurate as a statement of physics, but it could show that the defendant IC was aware of the risks of passengers standing too close to moving trains. In this respect, of course, the deposition testimony would most certainly not be hearsay, since it would not be offered for the truth of the matter it contained. Additionally, it may not be excludable under Rule 701(c) and 702 since it could be accompanied by a limiting instruction disavowing any reliability of the underlying scientific proposition. Admission of the deposition testimony thus limited, even if the plaintiff could not use the statements to assert the existence of a vacuum effect, or to advance the *764 theory that Joseph was sucked in by a vacuum, arguably may have helped her show that the defendants knew the danger of narrow platforms.
After ruling that the deposition testimony would be barred for not meeting the requirements of expert testimony, the trial judge went on to note that the plaintiff might want to introduce the deposition to show “what the railroad knew and ... acknowledged ... to be a known risk.” Report of Proceedings (Tr.) at 21. Given that this use of the testimony would not propose “to prove the truth of the matter asserted” (the hallmark of hearsay), the district judge did not believe that Rule 801(d)(2) was relevant.
Id.
(“I don’t think that the 801 analysis really kicks in because what he testifies to here isn’t hearsay.”). Judging by the trial judge’s statements, however, it was this limited use of the evidence that he barred under Rule 801(d)(2). Of course, Rule 801(d)(2) is not an independent basis for excluding testimony. So, what if we offer a limiting instruction? We believe that Prender-gast’s testimony, cast in the only form in which it would have been acceptable, may say too little (only that the railroad knew the danger of narrow platforms). All of the jurors knew, by common knowledge and through the actual trial testimony of Prendergast,
see, e.g.,
Tr. at 165, that the railroad knew narrow platforms to be a safety risk. Given the collateral nature of this limited basis for introduction of Pren-dergast’s statements, we believe they might properly have been excluded under Fed.R.Evid. 403.
See United States v. Harwood,
B.
The district judge barred the introduction of a photograph of the body of the deceased on the ground that its probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Fed. R.Evid. 403. After weighing the appropriate considerations, he acted within his discretion. Tr. at 438 (“[Tjhere has been no reconstructive testimony as far as based upon the position of the body ..., so the position of the body in that picture doesn’t support any theory of where the decedent was at the time of his being struck by the train.”). In weighing the probative against the prejudicial, the discretion of the district court is broad.
C.
The plaintiff also appeals certain rulings on jury instructions: (1) adoption of defendants’ instruction number 11, stating Joseph’s duty to exercise ordinary care at railroad crossings, (2) rejection of plaintiffs instruction number 3, stating the duty of a common carrier to its passengers, (3) rejection of plaintiffs instruction number 4, stating who is a passenger entitled to an elevated degree of care, and (4) rejection of plaintiffs instruction number 5, stating the duty of a common carrier to exercise an elevated degree of care in selecting a place for boarding. We consider a district court’s jury instructions with deference, analyzing them as a whole to determine if they accurately state the law and do not confuse the jury.
Maltby v. Winston,
There is one preliminary matter. Some of the arguments presented by both
*765
the plaintiff and the defendants go to the rules governing the giving of Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions (IPIs): Illinois Supreme Court Rule 239(a) dictates that “the IPI instruction shall be used[ ] unless the court determines that it does not accurately state the law.” However, the state preference for using IPIs rather than non-IPI instructions is not to be construed as advance approval by the Supreme Court of the IPIs.
Powers v. Ill. Cent. Gulf R.R. Co.,
One issue of jury instructions questions whether Joseph Aliotta’s duty of care was overly emphasized. The court gave a defendant instruction which stated a person’s duty of care crossing a railroad track, based on
Greenwald v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Co.,
The rest of the disputed instructions go to the degree of care owed by the defendants. According to Illinois law, common carriers such as Amtrak owe the highest degree of care to “passengers.”
See Rotheli v. Chi. Transit Auth.,
First, we agree with the trial court that giving IPI 100.01 unmodified might have misstated the law and confused the jury. As the trial court noted, only one of the defendants here is a common carrier, and IPI 100.01 presumes that the plaintiff is a passenger. Thus, it was appropriate to modify the instruction. The trial court gave a version of the instruction modified in three ways. 10 First, the court informed the jury of the degree of care owed by Amtrak in the alternative that they do not find Joseph Aliotta to have been a passenger. Second, it distinguished Amtrak from the other defendants, which are not common carriers. These two modifications, while somewhat verbose, we believe to be accurate and adequately clear statements of the law. Third, the trial court limited the common carrier’s presumably elevated duty to a duty “with regard to the operation of the train.” This modification is closely tied to the other jury instructions issues, and we discuss it below.
The remaining jury instruction issues, which define the circumstances under which common carriers owe an elevated duty of care, are somewhat intertwined. The premier Illinois case dealing with the definition of “passenger,” or otherwise stated, the class of person to whom common carriers owe the highest degree of care, is
Katamay v. Chicago Transit Authority,
The plaintiff’s suggested jury instruction modified IPI 100.09 to include as passengers not only those who are “in the act of boarding” but all persons “standing on the platform ... with intent to board,” and the plaintiff asks us to find that IPI 100.09, unmodified, was an inadequate statement of the law. As Katamay itself implements IPI 100.09 and the comments to IPI 100.09 in Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, Civil, cite Katamay, the plaintiff has a rather heavy burden in attempting to demonstrate that Katamay suggests that IPI 100.09 should not have been used in this case. Nevertheless, we believe that the jury was misled without the gloss of Kata-may and other cases on the IPI. That is, while the IPI may suffice in most cases to distinguish between passengers and non-passengers (as defined by case law), Kata-may substantially broadened the class of persons entitled to a high degree of care in a way that the IPI does not and the district court instruction did not capture.
Rather than granting undue deference to the wording of the IPI, we believe that a clearer understanding of Illinois law can be gathered from reading
Katamay
carefully. The authorities cited by the Illinois Supreme Court in reaching its holding in
Katamay
strongly suggest that someone in Joseph Aliotta’s position (standing on the platform with intent to board) would be considered a passenger according to Illinois law. “[T]he rationale for the imposition of the duty upon a carrier to exercise the highest degree of care ... while [a person] is a passenger as distinguished from the lesser duty owed at all other times is that the degree of care should be commensurate with the danger to which the passenger is subjected.”
Katamay,
“It is not necessary, to create the relation, that the passenger should have entered a train, but if he is at the place provided for passengers, such as • the waiting room or platform at the station, with the intention of taking passage and has a ticket, he is entitled to all the rights and privileges of a passenger.... Whenever a person goes into such a place with the intention of taking passage, he may fairly expect that the company will understand that he is a passenger and protect him.” 12
*768
Also according to
Katamay,
the duty owed to passengers extends beyond the time the passenger is on the vehicle. “‘The relation of carrier and passenger does not terminate until the passenger has alighted from the train and left the place where passengers are discharged.’ ”
Katamay,
The principal case limiting the duty of care owed by railroads is
Davis v. South Side Elevated Railroad Co.,
“ ‘There is really no valid reason why a railroad company should be held to a higher degree of care in maintaining its station buildings .... ’ ‘A railroad company is held to the highest degree of care in respect to the condition and management of its engines and cars, because negligence in that respect involves extreme peril to passengers, against which they cannot protect themselves.’ ”
Davis,
“[I]n all [the eases enforcing the highest degree of care,] it is clear that the accidents happened in boarding or alighting from trains or in the course of their moving, and the reason for the highest degree of care in those cases was fully as great as if the passenger were on the moving train .... [T]he same degree of care is not required as to the stations and approaches to and from them, because the danger incurred in such surroundings is not the same as it is on moving trains.”
Davis,
What distinguishes Joseph Aliotta’s case from the many cases cited in
Katamay
is that most of those involved passengers getting off trains or about to board trains that had already pulled into the station and stopped. The problem here, of course, was precisely that the train did not stop. There is at least one Illinois case in which a train failed to stop,
Skelton v. Chicago Transit Authority,
Further, we do not believe that the fact that Joseph Aliotta was at the station at a time when no train was scheduled to stop is dispositive here, since the appropriateness of Joseph’s expectations can be determined by the jury when it decides whether there was “actual or implied consent of the carrier” (a requirement common to IPI 100.09, the plaintiffs modified instruction and the holding in Skelton) to stand on the platform in preparation for boarding a train. Here the station was likely un-staffed and there was no schedule posted. Joseph had called the night before for the schedule, which information he interpreted in light of his many years of familiarity with the local train service. At, say, an abandoned station with no service at all, Amtrak perhaps should not be expected to account for the safety of those individuals who have no reason to expect a train to come and stop for them. Given the facts at hand, however, we believe that there is an open factual question as to the “actual or implied consent” of the railroad. In all other respects, we believe that Joseph met the Illinois legal definition of “passenger.” The jury instruction submitted by the plaintiff was an appropriate one under these particular circumstances, and IPI 100.09 was an inadequate statement of the law.
The court also refused to give IPI 100.15, regarding the duty of common carriers to select safe boarding places, based on the defendants’ argument that IPI 100.15 does not apply to trains, whose stations are in fixed places, but rather applies only to conveyances, such as taxis or streetcars, on which the operator has discretion where to discharge or pick up a passenger. The defendants cite
Davis,
which states that a railroad does not have an elevated duty of care with regard to maintenance of its stations. However, as we noted above,
Davis
does not govern accidents which involve the motion of the train, but speaks more to those possible conditions of a station facility that are no different and no more dangerous than similar conditions in any other public space (e.g., a banana peel on a staircase). The defendants also note, accurately, that all of the cases cited under IPI 100.15 deal with buses or taxis, and not trains.
See
IPI 100.15 cmt. The defendants fail, however, to cite any cases holding that the IPI does
not
apply to trains. On the contrary, we have found substantial case law indicating that IPI 100.15 would have been appropriate here. For one, it appears that IPI 100.15 was given in
Katamay.
“Over objection of the' defendant the trial court
*770
instructed the jury that the defendant was a common carrier and that, in selecting a place for the plaintiff to board its train, defendant was to exercise the highest degree of care as to plaintiffs safety.”
Katamay,
Going back to the first jury instruction regarding Amtrak’s duty of care discussed above, in light of the applicability of IPI 100.15, we also believe that IPI 100.01 was modified too restrictively in stating that Amtrak owes a highest degree of care to passengers only “with regard to the operation of the train.”
The jury instructions here, in light of Illinois law, were inaccurate and misleading. Additionally, we must determine whether the faulty instructions confused or misled the jury. The central issue debated here is what degree of care Amtrak owed to Joseph Aliotta. Under the instructions given by the court, the jury had little recourse other than to find that Joseph was not a passenger, since he was not, under most reasonable interpretations, “in the act of boarding.” According to our reading of Illinois law, the class of individuals to whom common carriers by rail owe the highest degree of care is more expansive, and includes those individuals who, with the actual or implied consent of the carrier, are standing on a platform in preparation for boarding a train. Because it is possible, even probable, that the jury would have considered Joseph to be within this greater class of individuals, requiring them to assess negligence under a more stringent standard, we believe that the jury was confused and misled. Taking into account an elevated duty of care, the jury quite possibly might have come out the other way. As they touched upon such core issues in the trial, the jury instructions caused unfair prejudice to the plaintiff, thereby justifying the granting of plaintiffs Motion for a New Trial.
III.
For the reasons given above, the judgment of the district court is Reveesed and the case is Remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Notes
. Federal question jurisdiction exists for con-gressionally incorporated corporations under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
See Union Pac. R.R. Removal Cases,
115 U.S.
1,
. Rule 801(d). Statements which are not hearsay. — A statement is not hearsay if—
(2). Admission by party-opponent. The statement is offered against a party and is ... (D) a statement by the party's agent or servant concerning a matter within the scope of the agency or employment, made during the existence of the relationship ....
. There is no doubt here that, whatever the scope of his employment, the statements were “made during the existence of the relationship,” i.e., he was then (and still is, apparently) a Risk Manager.
. Although the need for reliability with respect to scientific subjects is the dominant consideration here, this might not always be the case. Sometimes, credibility based on attribution to the party against whom a statement is used will seem more persuasive because of its damaging quality than less persuasive because of the risk of scientific unreliability. Or justice and equity may demand attribution to a party and admissibility regardless of any Rule 702 considerations.
. Defendants' instruction 11: It is the duty of all persons about to cross a railroad track to look about them and see if there is danger and to take proper precaution to avoid an accident. It is generally recognized that railroad tracks are places of danger and that one crossing tracks must approach them with the amount of care commensurate with the known danger.
. Plaintiff’s instruction 11: It was the duty of Joseph Aliotta, before and at the time of the occurrence, to use ordinary care for his own safety. A person is contributorily negligent if (1) he fails to use ordinary care for his own safety and (2) his failure to use such ordinary care is a proximate cause of death....
. Plaintiff's instruction 3: At the time of the occurrence in question, the defendant, Amtrak, was a common carrier. A common carrier is not a guarantor of its passengers’ safety, but it has a duty to its passengers to use the highest degree of care consistent with the mode of conveyance used and the practical operation of its business as a common carrier by rail. Its failure to fulfill this duty is negligence.
. Court's instruction 2: When I use the word passenger, I mean a person who with the actual or implied consent of the carrier is in the act of boarding the conveyance of a common carrier.
. Plaintiff’s instruction 5: In selecting a place for Joseph Aliotta to board its vehicles, it was the duty of the defendant, Amtrak, as a common carrier, to exercise the highest degree of care consistent with the mode of conveyance used and the practical operation of its business as a common carrier by rail. The failure of the defendant to fulfill this duty is negligence.
. Defendants' instruction 3: At the time of the occurrence in question, the defendant, Amtrak, was a common carrier. A common carrier is not a guarantor of its passengers' safety, but with regard to the operation of the train, it has a duty to its passengers to use the highest degree of care consistent with the mode of conveyance used and the practical operation of its business as a common carrier by rail. Its failure to fulfill this duty is negligence. In all other respects (including the operation of the train if you find that Mr. Aliotta was not a passenger), it was the duty of the defendants Amtrak and Mr. Gilmer, before and at the time of the occurrence, to use ordinary care for the safety of the plaintiff. That means it was the duty of the defendants to be free from negligence.
.In Illinois, whether an individual is a passenger of a carrier is, given uncontroverted facts, a question of law.
Skelton
v.
Chi. Transit Auth., 214
Ill.App.3d 554,
. The reach of
Jennings
may have been somewhat limited by
Davis v. South Side Elevated Railroad Co., 292
Ill. 378,