The Federal Railroad Administration said it is making its investigation reports of major train accidents and other incidents available online for the first time.
The move is to increase public awareness about the causes of specific train accidents and to reduce the need for individuals to submit Freedom of Information Act requests, FRA Administrator Joseph Boardman said Tuesday.
“There’s no reason that anyone who’s interested shouldn’t be able to find out the probable cause of a train accident,” said Boardman, explaining that formal FRA accident investigation reports generally focus on high-consequence train-to-train collisions, derailments, some highway-rail grade crossing collisions, and all railroad employee fatalities.
The accident investigation Web page can be accessed at http://www.fra.dot.gov/us/content/1696.
Separately FRA, part of the Department of Transportation, said that Canadian Pacific Railway Co. had joined Union Pacific Corp. in a major federal rail-safety pilot program designed to allow employees to voluntarily and anonymously report “close call” incidents that could have resulted in an accident.
“This risk-reduction program provides an indispensable opportunity to analyze ‘close-call’ events to help identify and correct potential safety problems across the industry,” Boardman said in a statement Wednesday.
