Safety management and oversight tops TSB’s 2014 Watchlist

Written by Jenifer Nunez, assistant editor

Through its updated Watchlist for 2014, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) is raising awareness about the safety issues that pose the greatest risk to Canada's marine, rail and air transportation sectors.

 

“Our role at the TSB is to shine a spotlight on the areas where strong action must be taken by the regulator and transportation industry officials and our evidence is found in hundreds of accident investigations, thousands of hours of research and dozens of TSB recommendations,” said Kathy Fox, chair of the TSB.

On this Watchlist, the one multi-modal issue is safety management and Transport Canada (TC) oversight. While all federally-regulated rail companies are required to have safety management systems (SMS), not all operators in the marine and air industry are required to have formal safety management processes to manage their risks. The TSB is therefore asking TC to require all companies to implement some formalized process to proactively identify and reduce risk.

In addition, in recent investigations, including the one into Lac-Mégantic, the TSB has identified problems with TC oversight, including a failure to identify companies’ ineffective processes and an imbalance between auditing processes versus traditional inspections.

“An SMS on its own is not enough,” explained Fox. “That’s why we are also calling on TC to regularly oversee all safety management systems and processes to ensure they are effective. And when transportation companies are unable to effectively manage safety, TC must intervene in a way that succeeds in changing unsafe operating practices.”

Furthermore, the TSB is calling on TC to ensure flammable liquids are safely transported by rail by requiring railway companies to properly classify these products, ship them in containers of the safest design and conduct a route risk assessment to proactively mitigate risks.

The TSB said despite some progress on issues included on previous Watchlists, there are still persistent risks in all modes. TSB noted issues in the rail category such as the number of collisions with vehicles at railway crossings remains high; the problem of railway signal indications not being recognized and followed continues and there is still no requirement for on-board locomotive video and voice recorders.

“For each of the issues identified on our Watchlist—issues supported by our science and our thorough examination of the facts and findings in every accident we investigate—we believe actions taken to date are insufficient,” noted Fox. “We expect TC and the transportation industry to take concrete steps to eliminate those identified risks. Canadians deserve no less than the safest possible transportation system.”

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