Articles Tagged with ''railroad industry safety''

Crews pulled an eighth body from the mangled wreckage of the Amtrack train that derailed and crashed Tuesday in Philadelphia, bringing the death toll to eight. A search dog helped locate what authorities say is the final victim of the crash. Many of the more than 200 people who were injured remain hospitalized.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday determined that operator fatigue caused a March 24, 2014 Chicago Transit Authority accident at O’Hare station which injured dozens of passengers.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has awarded eight grants totaling more than $21.2 million that invest in highway-rail grade crossing safety, Positive Train Control (PTC) implementation, and passenger rail. FRA awarded the grants as part of a Notice of Funding Availability it issued in July 2014 to distribute new FY14 Omnibus funding as well as unobligated funds from the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program.

As its investigation of the smoke and electrical arcing accident in a tunnel near the L’Enfant Plaza Metro Station on January 12 continues, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is looking at another smoke and electrical arcing event that occurred in February.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued its final report on the Feb. 20, 2014 accident in Jesup, Ga., in which a crew member was killed during the filming of a motion picture.

Trains colliding with other trains, trucks and cars are high profile stories – especially within the last month or so. When trains collide with people, the results can be even deadlier, yet such accidents tend not to garner as much media coverage as the other kind.

The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates trains carrying crude oil or ethanol will derail an average of ten times every year during the next two decades. Derailments are predicted to cause more than $4 billion in damage and possibly kill hundreds of people if an accident happens in a densely populated part of the U.S.

Recent I joined the BNSF Road Way Equipment Safety Leadership Team in Dallas, Texas. They began their meeting, as many companies do, with a safety briefing. For most meetings, I hear someone give a quick safety minute talk about a general hazard. At many meetings, the emergency exits are pointed out and actions to take are shared. BNSF went way beyond that in just about the same amount of time.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued urgent safety recommendations to the Federal Railroad Administration, the Association of American Railroads, the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association, and the American Public Transportation Association to help ensure that electronic alertness devices or “alerters” work as intended on trains.

Transportation fatalities in the United States decreased by three percent in 2013 from 2012, according to preliminary figures released yesterday by the National Transportation Safety Board. Fatalities in all modes of transportation totaled 34,678 in 2013, compared with 35,796 in 2012. Deaths in marine, aviation, highway and pipeline transportation decreased, although there was a rise in rail deaths.