The US National Transportation Safety Board issued three safety recommendations, calling upon industry to install crash-resistant inward- and outward-facing cameras in all rail transit vehicles, which would greatly aid in crash investigations.
The recommendations, issued to the Federal Transit Administration and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, call for recorders with a minimum of 12-hour continuous-recording capability that can verify crew actions and train operating conditions. According to the NTSB, the recorders must be easily accessible to review, with appropriate limitations on public release, for accident investigation and as a tool to improve operational safety.
“These devices, which are becoming cheaper and more reliable, are critical tools in our investigations. In 47 of the 64 rail transit accidents the NTSB investigated between 1976 and 2015, audio and image recorders would have greatly helped in learning what happened by documenting and preserving data describing the actions and conditions leading to an accident,” said NTSB Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt.
The NTSB has long advocated the broader use of recorders as a means to improve transportation safety; the issue is currently on the agency’s Most Wanted List of transportation safety improvements.
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