NTSB's Bruce Landsberg Discusses Driver Dangers
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MINNEAPOLIS — A top executive from the National Transportation Safety Board cited fatigue, impairment and distraction as key contributing factors to highway fatalities, and stressed to a group of trucking safety executives that the agency’s goal is to work with all stakeholders to make roads safer.
“We at the NTSB do advocacy, which is one reason why we are talking to you,” NTSB Vice Chairman Bruce Landsberg said during an April 4 session at the 2023 Safety, Security, Human Resources National Conference & Exhibition. “We don’t report to anybody. That irritates a number of people in Congress because we get to say what we think is happening, and we try to keep the politics to a minimum.”
Landsberg stressed that fatigue stands out as a prime safety issue.
“Fatigue — it’s a huge problem,” he said. “It affects all modes of transportation, because we have humans doing what we do.”
To offset these risks, Landsberg touted active safety systems available on many trucks and passenger vehicles.
“We at the NTSB are a big believer in technology,” he said. “Automatic emergency braking works. AEB is a fairly simple kind of technology that is a pretty well-proven system. As you get new trucks, please specify and make sure that they put it in because it’s a great backup for a driver’s moment of inattention.”
Following his great presentation NTSB Vice Chair Bruce Landsberg meets with the Minnesota Trucking Association. If you have any great shots or experiences to share about your time this week in Minneapolis please tag us using #SSHR23 we would love to hear about your time with us! pic.twitter.com/tCIa8pUh2L — ATA Safety Mgmt. & Transpo. Security Councils (@ATA_SMC_TSC) April 4, 2023
Landsberg noted that Americans have an attitude when they get behind the wheel that an accident will not happen to them. “When we get in vehicles we are quite certain that we are not going to have a crash,” he said. “Everybody that’s had a crash — every single one across all modes — is quite certain that when they climb aboard, it wasn’t going to happen to them.”
He noted that fatal accidents on U.S. highways cost Americans a total of $340 billion in 2019.
“The numbers, they are staggering, and it’s not just the trucks that are causing the problems,” he said. “It’s frequently the idiot drivers that surround you.”
Landsberg outlined a variety of do’s, don’ts, and philosophies aimed at reducing crashes and saving lives. For one, he said many drivers believe they can multitask while behind the wheel, but they cannot. “We do not ‘multitask’ — we switch back and forth between tasks. So when you’re doing multiple things in the cockpit, or inside a truck, it doesn’t work well because you are going from one task to another. This has been proven over and over again.”
Landsberg also urged motor carriers and drivers to discuss and learn from mistakes or events that could have lead to a crash, but didn’t. Instead of sweeping near-misses under the rug, he urged using these instances as learning experiences.
“Report it. Let’s figure out what happened, and fix it,” he said. “Let’s not punish people for coming forward and saying, ‘I screwed up.’ ”
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