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Sunday, January 16, 2000
By Steve Twedt, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
James E. Hall is chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that investigates America's disasters, from train derailments to boat sinkings to airline crashes. ? He served as the chairman of the board of inquiry when the NTSB held a public hearing in Pittsburgh after the 1994 crash of USAir Flight 427. In July, he was the NTSB's on-scene board member when a single-engine plane carrying John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn, and her sister, Lauren Bessette, crashed into the sea near Martha's Vineyard, Mass.
Lately, Hall's attention is being drawn more and more to tragedies that rarely make international headlines but where the body counts are mounting.
"There just was no correlation between the emphasis we put on the cockpit of an aircraft and in the cab of a commercial rig. We have to give our surface transportation safety the type of attention we give to aviation," Hall said last week.
"If you sit where I sit, every week a large number of reports comes across my desk, where a crash involving a passenger vehicle and a big rig meant loss of life. Unfortunately, the deaths are often among members of the same family."
More than 5,000 deaths each year occur in collisions involving big trucks or buses. Hall attributes much of that to congested highways, where a tractor with three trailers travels side-by-side with a subcompact car, both traveling 65 mph down the interstate.
And he sees something else.
"There has been a growing number of accidents and incidents in which the medical condition of the driver has been an issue," Hall said.
Hall concedes that one of the first steps to addressing that is "getting a realistic program in place" to ensure a commercial driver is medically fit to be driving.
"What's happening right now is there are people with infirmities that are undetected and untreated driving the highways. That situation is what needs to be fundamentally addressed.
"A big rig weighing 80,000 pounds on the highway is just as safety-sensitive, in terms of its operation, as aviation," Hall said. "If the media gave that subject as much attention as it does for aviation, it would be on the lips of every citizen."
Back to Rigged for Disaster.