By Michele Fuetsch, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Nov. 21 print edition of Transport Topics.
The National Transportation Safety Board has refused to reconsider its investigation of a fatal 1997 accident in Yonkers, N.Y., one often cited in support of stricter wetlines regulations on tank trucks.
The NTSB rejection statement, dated Nov. 7, reviewed the original accident report findings but did not include any new material.
The National Tank Truck Carriers had asked the board to withdraw its original report on the accident, in which a car struck a gasoline tanker truck, causing a fire that claimed the life of the car’s driver.
NTTC President John Conley called the NTSB’s refusal to reconsider “totally disappointing and totally expected.”
The board “apparently didn’t give any serious thought to the issues that we raised,” he said.
In its March 30 petition for reconsideration, NTTC said the NTSB report is “flawed” and that continuing to use the accident “as the ‘poster-child’ incident for advocating removal of product from loading lines on gasoline trailers does a disservice” to tank carriers and those who regulate them.
As a result of the accident and the subsequent investigation, NTSB recommended stronger regulations be adopted to address residual flammable liquids that linger in carrier tank lines — or wetlines as they are commonly called.
In January, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed a stricter wetlines rule, which is expected to be finalized next May.
The rule would require that existing tankers be retrofitted to protect wetlines or that new systems be installed that can remove residual product from the lines.
The trucking industry has argued that the rule would be costly and burdensome and that retrofitting could prove more dangerous than the existing standards for wetlines (4-18, p. 2).
Conley said he does not believe that NTSB took “seriously” the letter the tank carriers group sent asking that the accident report be withdrawn.
“If they had, they would have come up with some better answers,” he said. “What they’re saying, basically, is that, if there had not been product in the wetlines, there would have been no fire.”
Trucking has long disputed that finding, arguing that damage to the wetlines and any product in them did not cause the fire.
Conley said NTSB has ignored what the carriers said is the primary issue, whether the car traveling 45 mph into a tanker truck caused the tank to tear or rupture, releasing the gasoline that ignited the fire.
