Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is indeed an honor
to be here today at Norfolk Southern's annual safety awards meeting.
For my part, I always enjoy meeting with railroad professionals,
probably because the industry's in my blood. Before he died in
1945, my grandfather was a long-time section hand and conductor
on the old L & N Railroad.
It is somewhat ironic that since I came to the Safety
Board I have been to two accidents near my home in Chattanooga,
Tennessee. Both of them involved tank car failures on Norfolk
Southern rails. The first one occurred June 6, 1994, when a tank
car failure released arsenic acid, which threatened our local
water supply. I'm happy to say that your corporation responded
quickly and appropriately to our recommendations.
As a result of our recommendations, Norfolk Southern has
fully revised its systemwide emergency action plan for hazardous
materials incidents, has established predetermined isolation tracks
for each yard and terminal in the Virginia division, is experimenting
with a spill containment pan that can be placed under a leaking
tank car, has participated in emergency response drills in Chattanooga
and other locations, and is now better able to assess the severity
of hazmat releases and to take appropriate action. We closed
all the recommendations and classified them Acceptable Action.
Early this month I went to Sweetwater, Tennessee, about
an hour up the road from Chattanooga. On February 7, a tank car
on the Norfolk Southern line released its entire load of 10,400
gallons of carbon disulfide. A half mile area around the site
was evacuated, including 90 residents from a nursing home. The
tank car had been visually inspected by NS personnel in the Chattanooga
yard just before the accident, and was not observed to be leaking
at that time. So far, we've learned that the tank car was last
hydrostatically tested in 1990, when it was modified. We have
open safety recommendations to the FRA, calling for improved tank
car inspections and testing.
The track and material underneath the track was removed
for disposal. New track was laid and the line is now open. The
local water supply was not contaminated, but monitoring is continuing.
My association with your fellow workers on these two occasions convinced me of your commitment to safety. I believe all of us here are dedicated to safety, and the railroads can take pride in their overall safety record. But, as the railroad industry has recently learned, a good safety record can sometimes be a fragile commodity.
Since January 1, the Safety Board has launched investigators
on 14 railroad accidents that resulted in 19 fatalities, 226 injuries
and over $62 million in damages. Yesterday, I testified at a
Senate hearing on railroad safety and the House will hold hearings
next week on this string of tragic accidents .
One thing we've learned at the NTSB is that safety never
takes a holiday -- it's a 365-day-a-year job.
The National Transportation Safety Board is mandated by
Congress to investigate transportation accidents, determine probable
cause of these accidents, perform oversight of government regulatory
agencies, and issue safety recommendations to prevent similar
accidents from recurring in the future. You have heard of our
work in high-profile accidents like Mobile and Fox River Grove,
Illinois, but these are just a part of our responsibilities.
In the railroad mode alone, we conduct about 5 major investigations
and 90 to 100 regional investigations each year.
In our 29-year history, the Safety Board has investigated
thousands of railroad accidents; accidents that have resulted
in deaths, injuries, and millions of dollars in damages and settlements.
I am sure that I don't have to remind anyone in this room how
costly railroad accidents can be -- both in human suffering and
in monetary resources.
In recent years, the Safety Board has completed investigations
and adopted reports on major railroad accidents that highlighted
several important safety issues that I would like to discuss today.
I mention these because, to paraphrase Winston Churchill,
"If we forget the past, we surrender the future."
No Safety Board discussion on railroad safety would be
complete without talking about the merits of Positive Train Separation.
We have been a strong advocate of advanced train control systems
that will provide positive train separation and act as a safety
net for human performance failures in the operation of trains.
These systems would prevent accidents by overriding the engineer's
actions or inactions, by controlling train speed and by preventing
conflicts that could result in train collisions.
PTS has been on the Safety Board's list of Most Wanted
transportation safety improvements since the list was formulated
in 1990 and will remain there as long as there is progress to
be made in the implementation of this important technology.
The urgency of this issue has been highlighted over and
over in Safety Board investigations. The fatal train accidents
that took place in Sugar Valley, Georgia; Corona, California;
Knox, Indiana; Ledger, Montana; Thedford, Nebraska; and Marathon,
Texas could ALL have been prevented if a fully developed PTS control
system had been in place.
Three weeks ago I accompanied our Go-Team to begin the
investigation of a collision between two commuter trains in Secaucus,
New Jersey. The engineers of both trains and a passenger were
killed; scores of other passengers were injured. Once again,
positive train separation will be a major issue in this investigation.
It appears one of the trains passed beyond a stop signal, exactly
the kind of situation PTS is designed for. Another major issue
is crew scheduling, which relates to the fatigue issues I'll discuss
later.
Then, just 8 days later, an Amtrak train collided with
a MARC commuter train in Silver Spring, Maryland, killing 11 people
in the first car of the commuter train. Our preliminary findings
indicate that the commuter train was traveling 63 miles per hour
just before the accident, more than twice as fast as it should
have been going. Again, a PTS very well might have prevented
this accident.
The NTSB understands the reluctance of the railroad industry
to make the substantial investment to implement PTS control systems
on all mainline tracks nationwide, especially for a system many
regard as solely safety-oriented. However, we believe that the
payback on PTS control systems goes well beyond safety alone,
providing very definite business benefits in fuel savings, dispatching,
train pacing, and higher utilization of tracks that make this
expensive system pay off in ways other than safety.
While the nation's attention was recently riveted to the
issue of grade crossing safety after the schoolbus tragedy in
Illinois last fall, grade crossing safety has long been very high
on the Safety Board's agenda. The Board, as you may know, initiated
the Operation Lifesaver program. One of the strong points of
an agency like the Safety Board is that we can handle multi-modal
issues. The intersection between rail and highway poses many
safety challenges and deserves the serious attention we all are
devoting to it.
In an accident we investigated in Florida, a vehicle became
stuck on a grade crossing and was subsequently struck by a train.
At the time of the accident, the manager for the trucking company
was searching for a telephone number so that he could call the
railroad and stop any oncoming train. He was not successful for
a variety of reasons, but partly because he did not have the appropriate
phone number.
Last spring, I stood among the wreckage of a similar accident.
On May 2, 1995, northbound Amtrak passenger train 81, the "Silver
Star," crashed into a tractor-lowboy trailer that had been
stuck for more than 30 minutes at a passive public grade crossing
near Sycamore, South Carolina. As a result of the collision and
derailment, over 50 passengers were transported to area hospitals.
The circumstances of these two accidents beg the question:
How can a truck driver whose vehicle has become lodged or otherwise
hung up at a crossing contact the railroad quickly and efficiently
to stop any oncoming train? One method that the Sycamore investigative
team is exploring is posting an emergency telephone number and
a grade crossing identification number at each crossing. A driver
that became stuck or has an emergency situation could call a telephone
number posted at the crossing to contact local emergency authorities
or a railroad dispatching center, citing the crossing identification
number posted there to identify the location of the problem and
stop traffic on the rail line.
The Safety Board will adopt a final report on this accident
at our Board meeting next week.
While grade crossing accidents might be considered a highway
problem, they affect railroads the most, and railroads must be
part of the solution.
The railroads have been generous in their support of Operation
Lifesaver and other grade crossing programs in the past, but in
these times of government downsizing and budget cuts, the railroads
are going to have to become even more involved. They need to
actively participate in the next level of safety -- whether by
financing the development of positive train separation systems,
or enhancing grade crossing safety.
In this regard, I was pleased to hear that Norfolk Southern
already has posted 1-800 emergency numbers at active grade crossing
locations and is now considering this improvement at passive grade
crossing locations. Further, I also understand that Norfolk Southern
has committed additional staff and resources to more fully explore
ways to reduce the likelihood of serious grade crossing collisions.
As anyone who follows the news knows, we in Washington
are in the midst of a movement to eliminate government regulations
and avoid issuing new regulations. Unfortunately, this movement
does not always clearly distinguish between unnecessary or obtrusive
regulations, on the one hand, and regulations that are issued
to address valid safety issues, on the other. As a result, some
safety regulations are delayed for the wrong reasons.
Nevertheless, one way to enhance railroad safety without
waiting for regulations to be issued is for railroads to act voluntary.
A good example of this stemmed from an accident near Selma,
North Carolina, where a loose container from one train struck
an oncoming Amtrak locomotive, killing an engineer. As a result
of that accident, the FRA listed 7 areas where improvements could
be made by the railroad industry.
Rather then issuing recommendations to establish new regulations
impacting intermodal operations, the Safety Board took a different
approach. We contacted all of the Class I railroads in the United
States and asked them to advise us of changes they would be making
in their intermodal operations to address the 7 problem areas
identified in the FRA's report. The letters from the Class I
railroads are still coming in but all of them so far have voluntarily
made substantial safety improvements to their intermodal operations
without a formal regulation being issued by the FRA. The railroad
industry's response proves that regulations are not always necessary
to improve railroad safety.
Finally, I wish to personally congratulate Norfolk Southern
for the achievement of some remarkable safety accomplishments:
a record six consecutive E.H. Harriman Memorial gold medal awards
for employee safety. I understand that no other Class 1 railroad
has ever attained this high mark. Information provided to me
indicates that your railroad has the lowest reportable injury
frequency rate of all Class 1 railroads. The estimate for 1995
was 1.5 FRA reportable injuries per 200,000 hours, a rate that
is 1/3 that of all U.S. railroads as a group.
I know that your commitment to safety is strong. But
I encourage you to extend your outstanding record in employee
safety to public safety as well. Recently, the Safety Board asked
Norfolk Southern to assist us in a training program. We were
more than pleased with the response of your railroad when you
provided a locomotive simulator for the training of our highway
and railroad investigators and made available to us several passive
grade crossing locations for our on-site training module. This
training will be invaluable during our upcoming passive crossing
safety study. I am proud to participate in this safety awards
meeting, I would like to personally recognize those Norfolk Southern
employees who helped us, including Messrs. Steve Driskell, Gordon
Keller, Sam Wooten, Danny Gilbert, and Bill Cannon.
In closing, let me salute each of you and remind you that
when it comes to safety we all need to remember another one of
Winston Churchill's great thoughts, his three word commencement
speech: "Never give up."
