National Transportation Safety Board

Introduction

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent federal agency that is determines the probable cause of transportation accidents, as well as promoting transportation safety. The NTSB was created by the Air Commerce Act of 1926, when the U.S. Congress required the U.S. Department of Commerce to investigate the causes of aircraft accidents.

In 1967, the US Congress consolidated all transportation agencies into the new Department of Transportation (DOT) and established the NTSB as an independent agency. Since then the NTSB has investigated accidents in the aviation, highway, marine, pipeline, and railroad, as well as accidents related to the transportation of hazardous materials. In 1974, the US Congress re-established NTSB as an independent agency outside of the DOT and the NTSB has since investigated thousands of transportation incidents.

NTSB Offices

Within the NTSB there are a number of offices that cover all aspects of transportation and safety, such as aviation safety, highway safety, marine safety, and Railroad, Pipeline & Hazardous Materials Investigations.

The Office of Aviation Safety investigates all civil domestic air carrier, commuter, and air taxi accidents, as well as fatal and nonfatal general aviation accidents. This includes passenger as well as freight carriers. The Office of Aviation Safety will also participate in foreign investigations of accidents where the aircraft is manufactured in the United States. In addition, the Office of Aviation Safety will investigate safety issues that extend beyond a single accident to identify safety problems that need to be addressed.

The Office of Highway Safety investigates incidents that occur on US highways that have real safety significance, such as bridge collapses, fatalities on mass transit vehicles, and collisions at railway crossings.

The Office of Marine Safety investigates incidents that occur in navigable waters, internal waters, or the territorial sea of the US. In addition the Office of Marine Safety will investigate accidents that occur to US commercial ships across the world. .

The Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations actively investigates accidents involving railroads, pipelines, and the transportation of hazardous materials. This office has a number of divisions including the Railroad Division, which is responsible for railroad accident investigations involving passenger railroads, freight railroads, and commuter rail transit systems.

The Pipeline and Hazardous Material Division has two areas where it investigates

• Pipeline – this is for accidents that have occurred during the transport of natural gas or other hazardous liquids through pipeline systems, and accidents in which public safety is threatened by the release of hazardous substances.
• Hazardous Materials – this area investigates accidents no matter what the mode of transport.

Safety Recommendations

The NTSB is tasked with providing safety recommendations based on investigations of transportation incidents. As the NTSB is an independent agency it cannot regulate safety but does issue recommendations to federal, state, and local government agencies and to industry organizations to improve transportation safety. The NTSB investigations include conclusions, a probable cause, and recommendations. The NTSB recommendations can be ignored by states, for example as of 2012 thirteen states have ignored a 1993 NTSB recommendation that boater education classes be required for anyone taking a boat out on the water. Analysis has found that between 2000 and 2010, the average time that federal agencies, states, and transportation industries took to implement NTSB recommendations increased from just over three years to over five years.

Since 1967, the NTSB has issued more than 13,000 recommendations to reduce accidents and fatalities on US highways. But almost 2000 of those recommendations have not been acted on. Some recommendations, for example those in aviation, require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA ) to implement the NTSB recommendation. Some NTSB recommendations take over a decade to be implemented by the FAA, while some are never implemented.

Some NTSB recommendations are never implemented due to pressure from unions, companies and special interest groups. These groups spend almost a quarter of a billion dollars on over 2,000 registered lobbyists working on behalf of the transportation industry to delay recommendations that they disagree with. Some NTSB recommendations can be extremely costly for transportation companies, such as its recommendation for automated train control systems to prevent train accidents. The US Congress mandated that most railways install the systems by 2015 at an estimated cost $5.4 billion.