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Politics & The Nation transportation from A1
federal agencies, states and trans- portation industries took to im- plement NTSB recommendations stretched from just over three years to 5.4 years, according to an analysis by News21, a national university student reporting proj- ect, and the Washington-based Center for Public Integrity, a non- profit investigative journalismor- ganization. The averages do not
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SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2010 Transportation safety efforts held up for years
include the one-quarter of NTSB recommendations that are still pending or were closed because they were so outdated the board issued replacements or because the boardgaveuponthem. Federal agencies responsible
for highway safety, including NHTSA and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, took the longest to comply with NTSB safety recommendations: an average of almost eight years.
The FAA and aviation industry moved the fastest: an average of nearly four years. The delays have many causes,
the News21-Center for Public In- tegrity analysis found. Transpor- tation industries and interest groups lobby against safety mea- sures they fear will be expensive, intrusive or difficult to carry out. The federal rulemaking process is unwieldy and time-consuming. And as transportation technology
becomesmore complex, solutions costmore andtake longer. Transportation Department of-
ficials say they are working to clear backlogs and ease delays. Deputy Transportation Secretary John Porcari heads the depart- ment’s new Safety Council, which has cleared more NTSB recom- mendations in 2010 than in any of the previous five years, according to thedepartment. Since 1967, the NTSB has been
investigating transportation acci- dents and issuing recommenda- tions — mostly aimed at federal transportation agencies—to pre- vent deaths and injuries on the ground, in the air and on the wa- ter. The board is independent of Congressandregulatoryagencies, with five members appointed by the president for five-year terms. But it has no authority to force agencies, states or industries to implement its recommendations.
Abandoned efforts Over the past 43 years, the
NTSBhasissuedmorethan13,000 recommendations to reduce acci- dents and fatalities. It has suc- ceededininfluencingmany trans- portation safety improvements, includingchildsafetyseatsincars, better lighting and signs on air- port runways and new technolo- gies to prevent trains from run- ning into eachother. But the NTSB has essentially
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given up on 1,952 unfulfilled rec- ommendations—one of every six —that it hasmade since 1967, the News21-Center for Public Integri- ty analysis found. Meanwhile, transportation ac-
cidents –primarily car accidents – are the leading cause of death for Americansunder theageof34and the10th-leadingcauseofdeathfor all ages, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion. In 2008, there were 5.8 mil- lion crashes on the roadways, nearly 2,500trainaccidents,more than12,000boatingaccidentsand nearly 1,700 plane crashes. In all, 38,686 people died — though the number of highway fatalities has decreasedinthepast two years. The NTSB may spend years in-
vestigating an incident before making a safety recommendation. Most recommendations go to fed- eral transportation agencies such as the FAA. Agencies then may spend years drafting a proposal describing the new rule for the industry and deciding how it will bemonitored andwhat the penal- ties fornoncompliancewill be. TheWhiteHouse’s Office of In-
formation andRegulatoryAffairs, part of the Office ofManagement and Budget, has to review the costs andbenefits of thenewrule. The proposal then is open for
public comment, usually for 90 to 120 days. However, industry groups often ask for extensions— sometimes for years. Sometimes, a rule nevermakes
it out of the comment period. In 1995, for example, the FAA issued a proposed rule to address pilot fatigue by shortening the amount of flying timepilots are allowed. The proposal ignited a stormof
protest frompilotsunions, air car- rier associations and airline com- panies that said the FAA did not have enoughscientific evidence to backupthenewrule. Fourteen years and more than
2,000 comments later, the FAA said the proposalwas so old it had become outdated. It was with- drawn.Thismonth, theFAAstart- edtheprocessagain, issuinganew proposal to limitpilot flying times andacceptingpublicandindustry comments. The NTSB does not take cost
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into consideration when making its recommendations, some of whichcanbeextremelyexpensive. Theboard, forexample, longadvo- catedautomatedtraincontrol sys- tems toprevent trainaccidents. In 2008,Congress steppedintoman- date thatmost rail lines install the systems by 2015. The cost for in- stallation alone is an estimated $5.4 billionnationally. David Castelveter, vice presi-
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dent of communications for the Air Transport Association, a trade group that represents the major airlines, said some safety mea- sures are not worth the cost. For example,whentheFAAstudiedan NTSB recommendation to force airlines to require young children to be placed in safety seats in airplanes instead of riding in par- ents’ laps, the agency came to this conclusion: “If parents were forced to buy seats for their chil- dren, some would have to drive instead, and the accident rates for cars is much higher than for air- planes,”Castelveter said. The FAA has to “balance the
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interestsof the airlines, themanu- facturers, the suppliers, the peo- ple who fix the planes and the peoplewhoflytheplanes,”hesaid. “It’s not just as simple as, ‘The NTSBsaysdo it, so let’sdo it.’ ” Jill Zuckman, director of public
affairs for the Transportation De- partment, the FAA’s parent agen- cy, said dealingwithNTSBrecom- mendations has its own frustra- tions. In an e-mail, Zuckman said that sometimesNTSB recommen- dations are impractical or impos- sible to implement. Forexample, shesaid, theNTSB
“once recommended that the FAA develop a direct warning system about potential runway collisions for pilots in the cockpit.However, the technology did not existwhen the board made that recommen- dation and still does not exist. . . . The bottom line is that when it
This project This article is one of several froma
project detailing troubleswith theU.S. transportation system. Itwas reported by journalismstudents in the Carnegie-KnightNews21 programin collaborationwith theWashington- basedCenter for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization. TheNews21 programis based at
theWalterCronkite School of JournalismandMassCommunication at Arizona StateUniversity. Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive editor of TheWashington Post, is nowthe Weil Family professor of journalismat theCronkite School. Eleven student journalists traveled
to nine states, theDistrict,Mexico and Canada, talked to hundreds of officials, industry leaders and safety experts, and analyzed thousands of pages of documents, reports, and accident and investigation data from theNational Transportation Safety Board and regulatory agencies. Complete coverage,with stories,
graphics and videos,will be available Monday
atwashingtonpost.com.
comes to NTSB recommenda- tions, there is oftenmuchmore to it thanmeets the eye.”
‘Competing interests’ The speed at which a rule gets
implemented often comes down to economics. Two recent NTSB chairmen—JimHall,who served under President Bill Clinton, and MarkRosenker,whoservedunder President George W. Bush — agreed that cost is often themain reason safety recommendations take so long to implement. “The main game here is not to
oppose,” said Hall, who is now a registered lobbyist specializing in transportation safety issues. “The main game is to delay. . . . There are two competing interests. One is safety; the other is economics.” Unions, companies and special
interest groups are all influential indelaying rules theydon’t like. Such groups employed nearly
2,000 registered lobbyists in 2009 towork on behalf of the transpor- tation industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They spent $243.7 million lobby- ingCongress andregulatory agen- cies that year, though records are not specific about how much of that effort involved transporta- tionsafety issues. Allan Kam, a former senior en-
forcement attorney for NHTSA, said industry clout can be over- whelming. “Themotor vehicle in- dustry isapowerful constituency,” said Kam, now director of the Highway Traffic Safety Associates consulting firm. “If they’re united intheiropposition, thatbecomesa verypowerfulpolitical force.” The NTSB often will spend
years trying to reach a consensus with regulatory agencies and in- dustries over safety steps. That’s becauseitwantsthoseresponsible for implementing regulations to be on board, said Elaine Wein- stein, former head of the NTSB’s safety advocacydivision. Inaneffort to reachagreement,
the NTSB may accept something less thanwhat ithas askedfor. On Sept. 2, 1998, a Swissair
flight left New York headed to Geneva.When crewmembers no- ticedfireandsmokeinthecockpit, theydivertedtoHalifax,NovaSco- tia, but the airplane crashed into the water. All 229 passengers and crew members died. The NTSB worked with Swiss and Canadian investigators to determine what wentwrong.Butbecausetheflight data recorder and voice recorder lackedanyinformationfor thelast sixminutesof the flight, theywere severelyhampered. Inthe 15 years leading up to the
Swissair flight, therewere 52 inci- dents inwhichinformationfroma voiceordatarecorderwasmissing after a plane lost power during an emergency. So the NTSB put im- proving data recorders on its “MostWanted” list. Nine years later, the board real-
ized that the FAAwas not going to do everything it wanted, because of the cost to airlines. It wouldn’t mandate expensive recorders that would continue working even if a plane lost power. And it would retrofit some planes with record- ers but not others. For example, floatplanes such as the one that crashed in Alaska in August, kill- ing former Sen. Ted Stevens (R- Alaska) and four others, do not have to carry a recordingdevice. The board decided to takewhat
it could get. It closed the recom- mendation as “acceptable” in 2008. “I think it’s a very fragile sys-
tem,” saidGailDunham, executive director of theNationalAirDisas- ter Alliance/Foundation. “Yes, millions get where they’re going, but the accidents are so prevent- able.”
News21 reportersRichieDuchon and JenniferBrookland andCenter for Public Integrity staffmembers Michael Pell andNick Schwellenbach contributed to this report.
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