Agency calls for
implementation of 46 NTSB safety recommendations in 2 years
The National Transportation Safety Board
announced its 2019 – 2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety
Improvements, during an event held at the National Press Club,
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 NTSB’s 2019 – 2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation
Safety Improvements are:
“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 during Monday’s event saying, “We at the NTSB can speak on these
issues. 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.
An
archive of the livestream of Monday’s event is available on the NTSB’s YouTube
Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-BYsAOHADE
as is a video about the 2019 – 2020 Most Wanted List
at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb1mlYHs-1g.
To learn more
about the items on the NTSB’s 2019 – 2020 Most Wanted List of Transportation
Safety Improvements or the NTSB safety recommendations associated with
the list, visit https://go.usa.gov/xEXR8.
To report an incident/accident or if you are a public safety agency, please call 1-844-373-9922 or 202-314-6290 to speak to a Watch Officer at the NTSB Response Operations Center (ROC) in Washington, DC (24/7).