​​AS PREPARED

Good morning.

Thank you, Chuck, for that kind introduction.

Thank you to Jonathan Adkins and Russ Martin for inviting me to speak today to help kick off this great event.

And thanks to each of you for your continued focus on improving safety, and a special thank you to those of you in law enforcement for all that you do for safety – for our nation, for your states, and for families like mine who need you. I know it's been tough, but I can't tell you how appreciative I am for all that you do. Our partnership on scene during investigations is critical.

The theme for this conference is “Moving Mountains: Forging a New Traffic Safety Landscape." That speaks to doing big things.

Each of you have set high goals individually, in your personal and professional lives. And you have faced big challenges, certainly in the last couple of years… But you are aiming to save lives, the biggest mark that a person can make. While I'm speaking, I want you to think about big goals you've made and challenges you've faced and how you overcame them.

As a nation, we've always set big goals, and we've faced tremendous challenges. In fact, sometimes we thought that they were insurmountable. But we overcame them.

It was 59 years ago yesterday, on September 12, 1962, that President John F. Kennedy delivered one of the most iconic speeches of his presidency to a large crowd gathered at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas, known as “We choose to Go to the Moon."

A year earlier, the President began a dramatic expansion of the space program and committed the nation to the ambitious goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. And it was his job to sell it to Congress and the American people. He had a lot of support, but he also had a lot of critics. Some thought it was impossible; others thought it was a big waste of money with very few gains.

But Kennedy didn't waiver. In that moonshot speech, he acknowledged that there would be high costs and hardships but promised high rewards. He criticized those who wanted to wait, saying our country “was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them." He quoted British explorer, George Mallory, who died on Mt. Everest. When Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest, he said, “Because it is there." And he quoted William Bradford (Governor of Plymouth in 1630):

“All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage."

And then came the most famous line in his speech: “We choose to go to the moon… not because it is easy, but because it is hard." Let me change some of those words:

“We choose to save lives… not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

“We choose to fight like hell for all those who've lost loved ones in terrible, 100% preventable tragedies…not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

“And we choose ZERO… not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

Kennedy didn't hide his goal: we were going to do big things. We were going to move mountains. And in less than 7 years from that speech, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. And then this past July we all watched as Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos and their passengers travelled to space – or at least on the edge of space.

So, whether we're talking about space, the first flight across the Atlantic, the building of the transcontinental railroad, or reaching for zero – we can do big things. You can do big things. Together, we can move mountains to forge new landscapes. We can overcome great difficulties with answerable courage.

I asked each of you to think about some of the challenges that you have overcome, personally or professionally. What words come to mind when you think about what it takes to overcome those challenges?

I'm going to share with you one of mine: perseverance. I love running. In 2014, I decided to take up triathlon because I also liked to swim. Problem is I'm not the best bicyclist. I had fallen several times getting used to clipless pedals and then one Saturday while riding at the peak of my training for a half-ironman competition, I was heading down a steep hill and I didn't see a problem with the road and ended up crashing my bike. Two days later, I was sitting in a hazmat training class at the fire academy in Fairfax, Virginia, and my back went out and I went straight to the emergency room. Within weeks, I went from swimming, biking, and running for hours on end to barely being able to walk a quarter mile with a cane. Two years of MRIs, doctor visits, and cortisone shots led to no answers, and then – desperate to try anything that was NOT a pain killer – I ended up in a doctor's office getting platelet rich plasma therapy which began my healing process. And then I worked like hell to get back, and now I'm in training for that very half-ironman this October. So, it's not quite getting to the moon in 7 years; it's better, and it's my personal mountain to move. So for me: my word is perseverance. What about yours?

Perseverance….dedication…. Those are the words and are the partnerships we have to rely on to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on our roads. So let's talk about what's happening on our roads…

As some of you may know, I was sworn-in as Chair of the NTSB on August 13. The NTSB investigates all domestic aviation accidents in the United States and significant events in all the other modes of transportation.

On my first day, I again reviewed the numbers: Last year, there were 756 fatalities on our nation's railroads, including 198 at grade crossings which represents a 33% decrease from 2019 levels. Zero crashes and zero deaths on major airlines (that's right, zero); nearly 700 in marine; 15 in pipelines; and 38,680 lives lost on our nation's roads. 38,680: That's the highest number of fatalities since 2007!

• Alcohol-involved crashes: up 9%
• Speeding-related crashes went up 11 percent. In my home state of Virginia, State Troopers posted images on social media of tickets for someone doing 102 MPH in a 70 and another showing 115 MPH in a 55.
• Occupant ejections in vehicles: up 20%. Seatbelt usage is likely down.
• Pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities remained about the same but motorcyclist fatalities? Up 9%

And we know now that trend continues in 2021. NHTSA estimates that 8,730 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in the first three months of 2021, a 10.5% increase from the first quarter of 2020. And just like 2020, vehicle miles traveled declined, so fewer vehicle miles traveled isn't the solution. In this case, reduced volume was part of the problem.

The carnage on our roads has to stop. You know it, and I know it.

What these numbers represent is the reason I do my job, and the reason that it's so important that you're doing yours: each of these numbers represents a life cut short…. A mother or father suddenly, permanently gone… brothers and sisters not at the dinner table… graduations, weddings, and birthdays never celebrated.

That is why we need to do one more very big thing: zero traffic deaths. How many people think zero is attainable?

I'm here to tell you it is.

I vividly remember a crash in 1982. It was snowing hard in the DC area. Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River after takeoff. It hit seven occupied vehicles on the bridge before plunging through the ice into the Potomac River: 79 people were on board. Only five were rescued. Four motorists on the bridge also died. I'll never forget watching it all unfold.

We saw decades of airliner crashes, one after another. And then the federal government, the aviation industry, and labor did a big thing and moved a mountain.

They changed how they approached safety… transitioning from a reactive approach to one that is far more proactive… bringing together all stakeholders, constantly evaluating and re-evaluating risk based on data and non-punitive reporting and developing solutions to address that risk. Now we're at almost zero. In fact, we went nearly a decade after the tragic Colgan Air accident in 2009 with zero fatal accidents in major airline operations. Zero!

What was the challenge in aviation?

When the aviation industry and the federal government began their efforts to forge a new landscape, the fatality rate in aviation had reached a plateau, very much like the highway fatality number. Many people thought that the rate couldn't decline any further… just as some believe we will never drive highway fatalities down to zero.

But twice as many passengers were predicted to fly within 20 years, and nobody wanted a spike in the number of highly visible crashes. So the federal government, industry, and labor committed to reducing the rate 80% within 10 years—and they made it.

Then they kept going. Now, nearly every year, there are zero major passenger airline crashes. Zero!

Together, we can accomplish that on our roads. But first we have to fundamentally rethink how we approach road safety.

Long ago, Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."

The current approach, which favors automobiles and punishes only drivers for crashes, is clearly not working. If we are going to get to zero, we will have to do something different.

So today I'm calling on all transportation leaders, from roadway designers and public health officials up to the governor, from vehicle manufacturers to transportation providers, from entire communities to safety advocates to embrace a new way, a new approach, a new vision.

It's called the Safe System Approach. I'm in the process of holding a series of webinars focused on the safe system approach. The past four are on NTSB's YouTube Channel and my Twitter account. We held one Thursday focused on safe vehicles.

The Safe System approach is a shift in the way we think about traffic safety. We've spent decades planning, designing, building, and operating our road system for the efficient movement of people and goods, rather than safety. And we've spent decades developing countermeasures and behavioral interventions that are targeted at individuals, rather than the entire system. Let's take speeding. Does the responsibility for speeding just fall on the driver or did the system, as a whole, fail that driver? Did the road design encourage high speeds? How about ill-conceived federal guidance that leads to ever-increasing speed limits in States? How about States which fail to give local authorities the ability to set lower speed limits? Vehicle manufacturers who design vehicles that can exceed 100 miles per hour or that have no speed limiters. The Safe System approach considers all this and more.

The principles underpinning the Safe System acknowledge that:

• humans will make mistakes that lead to traffic crashes, but no one should lose their life or be seriously injured as a result of a crash;
• the human body has a limited physical ability to tolerate crash forces;
• all parts of the system must be strengthened so that if one part fails, road users are still protected. With more than 200 million drivers on the road, somebody will make a mistake. That is guaranteed. But that mistake does not need to end in tragedy. Other parts of the system – safe vehicles, safe roads, safe speeds, and post-crash care – can still prevent the worst outcomes. Does that mean we still have to apprehend speeders and stop impaired drivers, or better yet, prevent them from driving when impaired? Of course! Just and fair enforcement cannot stop or more lives will be lost!
• and, finally, road safety is a shared responsibility, and it will take bringing everybody to the table to identify the best solutions: planners, designers, and engineers, law enforcement, policymakers, public health professionals, educators, vehicle manufacturers, insurers, rail and transit providers, car seat manufacturers, fleet managers, road users, the media, entire communities that normally don't have a seat at the table and many more.

And that has to include our biggest critics. It's only through an all-inclusive effort that we'll be able to achieve zero. In short, we need to break down the silos and make sure everyone is at the table and working together to identify the best solutions.

That's what aviation did. We can too.

I want to go back to that quote in Kennedy's speech:

“All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage."

But with your passion, strength, courage, and commitment, and with all of us coming together to work collaboratively through a safe system approach—we can do something different in road safety. We can do something big in road safety.

Together, we can move mountains, and we can forge a new landscape.

And together, we can get to zero deaths and zero serious injuries.

Thank you. ​​