In the wake of the May 12 Amtrak train derailment that killed eight people and injured more than 200 others near Philadelphia, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) repeated its longstanding recommendations about installing audio and image recorders.
The derailed train 188 had as its engineer Brandon Bostian, 32, a native of Memphis and a 2001 graduate of Bartlett High School.
In a letter to Amtrak on July 8, the National Transportation Safety Board said that it should install audio and image recorders in the operating cabs of all of its trains, and it should then review the recordings to ensure that crew actions are in accordance with procedures. The recorders should be crash- and fire-protected and should face both inward and outward.
Additionally, the NTSB asked Amtrak to report twice a year on its progress in the installation of these recorders.
“The information that recorders can provide to ensure that crews are consistently operating trains safely is just too valuable to ignore,” said NTSB chairman Christopher A. Hart. “And recordings can provide critical information in understanding crew actions prior to accidents, which can help prevent tragedies like the recent derailment in Philadelphia.”
Background
- 1996: The NTSB first made recommendations on audio recorders in operating cabs to the Federal Railroad Administration following a 1996 train collision in Silver Spring, Md.
- 2005: The NTSB then called for image recorders after a 2005 accident in Mississippi.
- 2008: Then, after a commuter train collided with a freight train in Chatsworth, Calif., in 2008, killing 25 people, the NTSB enhanced the recommendations to include “crash- and fire-protected inward- and outward- facing audio and image recorders capable of providing recordings (for at least 12 hours) to verify that crewmembers actions are in accordance with rules and procedures that are essential to safety as well as train operating conditions.”
Recommended
Also, in a letter to the Federal Railroad Administration issued July 8, the NTSB reiterated those earlier recommendations.
The NTSB cited 12 rail accidents in which it had recommended the use of audio and/or image recorders in operating cabs after finding that, in almost all cases, such information could have significantly aided the investigations of those events.
The FRA letter also referenced two recent train accident investigations that were aided by inward-facing audio and image recorders:
- 2013: In a 2013 accident in Walnut Creek, Calif., involving a Bay Area Rapid Transit train that struck roadway workers, the video/audio recorder helped verify the accident sequence.
- 2015: In an ongoing investigation of a commuter train that struck a truck earlier this year in Oxnard, Calif., the information from the recorder has been critical in corroborating the engineer’s description of events.
Following the May 12 derailment, Amtrak announced that it would install inward-facing video recorders in the operating cabs in some of its trains.
The NTSB has asked Amtrak to install recorders in all of its trains, ensure that they capture audio, ensure they are protected from crashes and fires, and require that they be regularly reviewed to ensure crewmembers are operating trains safely.
The full safety recommendation letter to Amtrak and the safety recommendation letter to the Federal Railroad Administration are available online.
