WASHINGTON — The National Transportation Safety Board revealed its 2019-2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements Monday.
First issued in 1990, the NTSB Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements serves as the agency’s primary advocacy tool to help save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce property damage resulting from transportation accidents.
The 10 items on the list include:
- Eliminate distractions
- End alcohol and other drug impairment
- Ensure the safe shipment of hazardous materials
- Fully implement positive train control
- Implement a comprehensive strategy to reduce speeding-related crashes
- Improve the safety of Part 135 aircraft flight operations
- Increase implementation of collision avoidance systems in all new highway vehicles
- Reduce fatigue-related accidents
- Require medical fitness – screen for and treat obstructive sleep apnea
- Strengthen Occupant Protection
“The 2019-2020 Most Wanted List advocates for 46 specific safety recommendations that can and should be implemented during these next two years,” said NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt. “It also features broad, longstanding safety issues that still threaten the traveling public.
Sumwalt issued a call to action when the list was released.
We at the NTSB can speak on these issues,” he said. “We board members can testify by invitation to legislatures and to Congress, but we have no power of our own to act. We are counting on industry, advocates, and government to act on our recommendations. We are counting on the help of the broader safety community to implement these recommendations.”
There are 267 open NTSB safety recommendations associated with the 10 Most Wanted List items and the NTSB is focused on seeing 46 of those implemented within the next two years. The majority of these recommendations, roughly two-thirds of the 267, seek critical safety improvements by means other than regulation. Of the 46 safety recommendations the NTSB wants implemented in the next two years, 20 seek regulatory action to improve transportation safety.
At any given time, the NTSB is managing around 1,200 open safety recommendations and while all have the potential to save lives and reduce injuries by preventing accidents, the NTSB cannot effectively communicate about each of them. The NTSB’s Most Wanted List provides the NTSB’s advocacy team and other agency communicators a roadmap to focus on a select number of recommendations. In 2017 the NTSB went from an annual list to a biennial process, to give our advocacy team, their partners, and our safety recommendation recipients more time to move toward implementation of the recommendations associated with the list.
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