The National Transportation Safety Board is seeking regulations that would require mounting video and voice recorders inside the cabs of every locomotive, my colleague Rick Shapiro reports in his latest post to the Virginia Beach Injuryboard. The recommendation to the Fedral Railroad Administration comes in the wake of official findings that the deadly collision between a Metrolink commuter train and a Union Pacific freight train near Los Angeles in September 2008 occurred because the commuter train’s chief engineer was texting instead of watching for stop signals. Rick says that while in-cab recording devices could potentially reduce unsafe crew behaviors, safeguards must be written into any such regulations that would bar companies from using those video cameras and voice recorders for purely disciplinary purposes.
EJL