WASHINGTON – The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday released its annual “Most Wanted” list of safety improvements, supplementing six returners from previous years that are still dogging the NTSB with four new concerns.
New to the list this year:
- Ensuring safer transportation of hazardous materials by rail tank cars
- Enforcing medical fitness for duty of transportation operators
- Implementing stronger commercial trucking safety
- Requiring pilots to strengthen procedural compliance
Returning from previous lists:
- Making mass transit safer
- Preventing in-flight loss of control in general aviation
- Ending distracted vehicle operation
- Implementing positive train control
- Enhancing public helicopter safety
- Ending substance impairment in transportation
“The ‘Most Wanted’ list is our road map for 2015,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart in a press release. “We want it to be a roadmap for policymakers and legislators as well. These are safety improvements for which the time is ripe for action.”
The NTSB issues yearly recommendations based on their investigations of aviation, rail, marine, highway and pipeline accidents . It uses the list to organize priorities for the year, identifying areas of concern in transportation safety on which officials and lawmakers can concentrate their efforts.
Ending substance impairment in transportation, a returning issue from last year, is further complicated by the current and impending legalization of recreational marijuana in four states and the District of Columbia.
“We are concerned about any impairment, whether it’s from marijuana or alcohol or anything else,” said NTSB member Robert Sumwalt at a press conference at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board.
It is illegal in all states for individuals to drive while impaired by marijuana.
In an unusual move, the NTSB put a date on one of the issues, implementing positive train control, or PTC.
The system would require monitoring and controlling train movements that can be used to stop or slow trains automatically, avoiding accidents like the March 24 derailment of the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line. The train went off the rails after the train operator dozed off and failed to slow down before entering the station.
Congress established a 2015 deadline for implementation of the technology, which the NTSB reiterated in its “Most Wanted” list.
Ed Greenberg, a spokesperson for the Association of American Railroads, said that while it is committed to rolling out PTC in its freight trains, the 2015 deadline is not feasible.
“PTC is an unprecedented technological challenge, and freight railroads have been working hard to meet the December deadline, but due to the complexity, full PTC implementation will need more time,” Greenberg said. “The freight rail industry is committed to implementing PTC, but adjusting the timeline would give time to design, test, install and train employees on the use of this technology.”
Acting NTSB Chairman Christopher Hart speaks on desired safety improvements for 2015.
