Railroad Safety Standards Have Gotten So Bad the NTSB Is Beginning to Question the Whole Concept of Self-Regulation—Fortune magazine
Self-regulation is to regulation as self-importance is to importance.
A little clarification to those of you not familiar with the role of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB): They have no direct role in drafting regulations, and they are forbidden by law from enforcing any regulations.
The NTSB is limited to investigating incidents, and recommending changes.
The federal agency which is responsible for enforcing these regulations is the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), and they have left the drafting of standards to the rail industry trade group the Association of American Railroads (AAR), with foreseeable, and disastrous, results:
Freight railcar inspections are happening less often and are not as thorough as in years past due to staff cuts, time constraints and regulatory loopholes, a union official testified Friday during a federal hearing to examine the reasons behind a fiery train derailment in Ohio.
The National Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary report that an overheating wheel bearing likely caused the Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern derailment that sent a plume of toxic black smoke into the sky near East Palestine, Ohio. Several tank cars were damaged in the crash, and officials decided that five of them containing vinyl chloride needed to be blown open to release the chemical and prevent an explosion.
It’s not clear whether an inspector would have been able to catch that the bearing was failing because it is sealed within the railcar’s axle. No inspector was even given a chance.
Jason Cox with the Transportation Communications Union testified Friday during the second day of the NTSB hearing that the railcar that caused the derailment wasn’t inspected by Norfolk Southern even though it passed through three railyards where qualified inspectors were working.
Cox said the lack of inspections reflects changes Norfolk Southern has made since 2019 to slash the ranks of car inspectors and other employees, and that the company increasingly uses a loophole in federal regulations to rely on train crews to complete inspections instead of experts trained to do that work. He said train crews look at just 12 points on a rail car instead of the 90 to 105 points a carman checks.………
Members of the NTSB questioned the wisdom of letting the railroad industry largely self-regulate — the Association of American Railroads trade group sets recommended standards — but [Senior Vice President, AAR Safety & Operations Michael] Rush said federal regulators have input on the group’s rules.
"Have input," yeah, right.
That means that industry lobbyists take senior FRA officials out to dinner before doing whatever the hell that they want.
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