NTSB Releases 2013 ‘Top Ten’ Transportation Safety Priorities
The National Transportation Safety Board released its “most wanted” list for 2013, highlighting its top transportation safety concerns, including preserving highway infrastructure and mandating collision-avoidance technologies.
NTSB’s annual list of its top advocacy priorities calls for ending distraction in all modes of transportation.
“Distraction was the cause of multiple accidents investigated by the agency in recent years, and its deadly effects will only continue to grow as a national safety threat,” NTSB said.
Six of the 10 issues focus on highway travel where most transportation fatalities take place and include substance-impaired driving, which NTSB said was the No. 1 killer on the list.
“Transportation is safer than ever, but with 35,000 annual fatalities and hundreds of thousands of injuries, we can, and must, do better,” NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman said in a statement.
American Trucking Associations applauded NTSB’s list and expressed its shared interest in advancing several items on the list.
ATA President Bill Graves cited the dangers of impaired and distracted driving, the need to repair and improve the nation’s infrastructure and the benefits of active safety technologies as issues important to the trucking industry.
NTSB’s Top Ten list:
• Improve safety of airport surface operations.
• Preserve the integrity of transportation infrastructure.
• Enhance pipeline safety.
• Implement positive train control systems.
• Eliminate substance-impaired driving.
• Improve the safety of bus operations.
• Eliminate distraction in transportation.
• Improve fire safety in transportation.
• Improve general aviation safety.
• Mandate motor vehicle collision avoidance technologies.
