FRA: Making a federal case out of top safety concern

FRA issues regulation to tackle the No. 1 cause of trains accidents traced to human error: poor management-worker communication

By Jeff Stagl, managing editor

After spending the past two years studying human error-caused train accidents, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) last month took a major step toward preventing them. The agency issued a regulation that addresses the No. 1 cause of such accidents: poor communication between management and workers.

The regulation places more accountability on railroad managers to enforce basic operating rules and on workers to comply with rules. The regulation defines three levels of responsibility/accountability: managers, who must implement programs designed to test employees’ proficiency in abiding by applicable operating rules; supervisors, who are required to “properly administer” the operational tests; and employees, who need to comply with operating rules, the FRA said.

“There’s really nothing new that railroads aren’t already doing. We wanted to make a federal case out of this because too many mistakes are being made,” says FRA Administrator Joseph Boardman. “It’s all about communication. We want to make sure every employee knows how to operate in the field and do their jobs safely every time, every day, no matter what task they are performing.”

No. 1 cause: human error

That hasn’t always been the case. Human error is the leading cause of train accidents.

Between January and November 2007, 38 percent of the 2,330 train accidents that occurred primarily were caused by human factors, according to preliminary FRA data. The second-highest cause: track defects, at 35 percent.

Two years ago, the FRA began analyzing root causes of several serious human error-caused train accidents, including a January 2005 Norfolk Southern Railway accident in Graniteville, S.C., that caused nine fatalities. An investigation traced the Graniteville accident to an improperly lined switch, which led a moving train to collide with a parked train, prompting the release of toxic chlorine gas from three damaged tank cars.

The Railroad Safety Advisory Committee (RSAC), which counts railroad managers, rail labor union representatives and FRA officials as members, reviewed causes of several incidents and tried to reach a consensus on the best way to prevent accidents caused by human errors.

“We never really did reach a consensus,” says Boardman.

But committee meetings and other discussions led to the regulation, which seeks to address such errors as improperly lined switches, shoving rail cars without a point person to monitor the track ahead or leaving cars in a position that obstructs a track.

Railroads must comply with regulation requirements by Jan. 1, 2009. The FRA will monitor compliance through inspections and field audits. If there are any violations, the agency can levy fines ranging from $7,500 to $16,000.

In the past, violations had been subject to internal railroad standard operating procedures and addressed through employee disciplinary procedures or other corrective actions.

Speak up if something’s unsafe

The regulation provides rail workers a “right of challenge” to invoke if they’re instructed to take actions that, in good faith, they believe would violate operating rules, the FRA said.

“We want to give workers a way to challenge something they feel is unsafe,” says Boardman.

United Transportation Union officials applauded the regulation’s intent on their Web site, but expressed reservations about whether the rule differentiates between an employee who willfully violates federal rules and one ordered to do so by a supervisor. For example, they questioned what would happen to an employee who caused an accident after being instructed to work beyond his or her allotted hours.

However, the hours-of-service issue didn’t come up as a topic of concern during RSAC meetings, says FRA spokesman Steve Kulm.