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The NTSB's Most Wanted List represents the NTSB's advocacy priorities. It is designed to increase awareness of, and support for, the most critical changes needed to reduce transportation accidents and save lives. Specific safety recommendations issued by the NTSB are no longer on the Most Wanted List. However, associated safety recommendations illustrate those measures that, when adopted, would help address the issue areas on the list. The NTSB will update the Most Wanted List annually, selecting issues based on the level of progress made and whether the impetus exists for change. The following are the current issues.

Most Wanted List brochure

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We Are Safer

The following transportation safety issues were previously on the NTSB's Most Wanted List. As a result of the actions taken to implement the necessary life-saving safety recommendations…We are Safer.

Commuter Category Airline Safety

Improve Crew Resource Management

Wake Vortex Turbulence

Explosive Mixtures in Fuel Tanks on Transport Category Aircraft

Airplane Cargo Compartment Fires

Small Passenger Vessel
Safety

Pipeline Fatigue

Marine Post-Accident Drug/Alcohol Testing

Are You At Risk

NTSB safety recommendations are issued as a result of its investigations of transportation accidents, incidents and safety studies conducted by the Safety Board to improve Transportation Safety. When these recommendations are not implemented, transportation safety continues to be at risk.

Enhanced Protection for School Bus Passengers

In its 1999 special investigation report on bus crashworthiness, the NTSB found that compartmentalization, the method of occupant protection developed for school buses, does not protect all passengers in all types of vehicle impacts and rollovers. read more >

Child Passenger Protection on Aircraft

Since the late 1970s the NTSB has recommended that children under the age of 2 be restrained in an appropriate child restraint device when traveling by air, and thereby remove the allowance for these young children to be carried lap held and without adequate restraint. read more >

Did You Know

Air traffic control works 24-hours a day, 365 days a year. Controllers work rotating shifts, including nights, weekends, and public holidays.
While there has not been a fatal commercial airline accident since 2009, accidents involving smaller, private planes result in hundreds of deaths every year.
A driver who has been on the road for 10 hours without break is 2.5 times more likely to cause an accident than a driver who has recently gotten on the road. In the 11th hour without rest, this increases to 5 times more likely.
36% of all aviation accidents occur during the landing phase of a flight. And the deadliest aviation accident in world history was a runway collision during takeoff between two jumbo-jets in the Canary Islands in 1977. The crash killed 583 people.
A flight recorder can survive an impact of 3600 g's, as well as temperatures of over 1000^oC.
According to estimates by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a person can make 88 impaired driving trips before being arrested.
Teen drivers account for less than 7 percent of the driving population, but are involved in 13 percent of all deadly car accidents.
750 million passengers travel by motorcoach annually.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that helmets saved the lives of over 1800 motorcycle riders and passengers in 2008.