In this episode of Behind-the-Scene @NTSB we talk with NTSB Office of Railroad, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Investigations’ HazMat Branch about their work to improve transportation safety.
To read some of the investigative reports discussed in this episode, visit our webpage.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast platform.
And find more ways to listen here: https://www.blubrry.com/behind_the_scene_ntsb/.
By Stephanie Matonek, NTSB Transportation Disaster Assistance Specialist
Today, the third International Day Commemorating Air Crash Victims and their Families, we join with survivors in remembering those they have lost.
Three years ago, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), in cooperation with the Air Crash Victims’ Families’ Federation International (ACVFFI), designated February 20 the International Day Commemorating Air Crash Victims and Their Families. This observance was established to ensure we never forget about the victims and their families, or the unimaginable journey these families faced in the aftermath of an aviation disaster.
In the United States, the NTSB’s Family Assistance program was established in part by the tireless efforts of survivors and family members advocating for change after experiencing loss and suffering from aviation disasters in the 80s and early 90s. Today, the NTSB’s Transportation Disaster Assistance (TDA) team continues this important work to ensure survivors and families are provided information, resources, and support after a disaster, no matter what mode of transportation it occurs in. Yet the TDA team that is responsible for this program cannot do this work alone. Over the decades since the NTSB’s family assistance program began, the partnerships we have made with organizations and agencies from around the world and involved in providing family assistance after transportation disasters have become an integral part of our existence. In fact, our team today is continuously reminded how important and valuable these partnerships are to ensuring we meet the fundamental needs of survivors and families when tragedy strikes.
One partnership in particular has been vital to the NTSB’s family assistance program since its inception: the American Red Cross. At the request of the TDA team, the Red Cross provides direct care and support to hundreds of families and survivors yearly. These efforts can be seen during NTSB public events, through direct requests by those TDA assists, and on-scene at accidents that NTSB investigates.
Today we remember each and every air crash victim we have lost, and their families. And we extend our appreciation to our family assistance partners that help us ensure that those who are affected most, survivors and families, get the care and support they need, no matter where or when a disaster occurs.
In this episode of Behind-the-Scene @NTSB, we talk with staff from the Office of Marine Safety, the Office of Railroad, Pipeline, and Hazardous Materials Investigations, and the Office of Research and Engineering, about the investigation of the 2021 Anchor Strike of Underwater Pipeline and Eventual Crude Oil Release in San Pedro Bay off the coast of Huntington Beach, CA.
For full details on this investigation, including a recording of the Board Meeting, visit our webpage.
Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or your favorite podcast platform.
And find more ways to listen here: https://www.blubrry.com/behind_the_scene_ntsb/.
By NTSB Safety Advocacy Team
Before reading any further, start exploring this dashboard. Addictive, right? If you care about aviation accidents, the NTSB’s dashboards get the statistics to you in an interactive format that always seems to have another layer to discover.
If you use the NTSB’s static accident spreadsheets in Excel, you can keep using them. But you’re getting less information, with less control, than is available to you through the agency’s data dashboards. Many users grab the same data regularly to populate legacy products, but if you want to see the data from many points of view with more control, check out the data dashboards.
In the new US Civil Aviation Accident Dashboard, for example, you can customize a range of years, see the data on a map, and filter by accident details for Part 121, Part 135, and general aviation (GA) flights. Familiar Excel tables, such as Accidents by Defining Events and Phases of Flight, are still available, but the dashboard lets you further customize the selected data dynamically by operation type, injury level, and state, delivering many more possible data views than the tables provide.
Historically, the NTSB Office of Research and Engineering’s Safety Research Division provided the annual census first as a printed book, and then as an annually updated set of Excel spreadsheets, and now, finally, as a dashboard. Additional GA data is also available in the new format. (And, because it was our first dashboard, the division created a video tutorial providing instructions for working with it.)
“We rolled out the GA dashboard for Oshkosh (EAA Airventure),” says Senior Aviation Accident Analyst Nathan Doble, who made the annual US Civil Aviation data available and interactive in dashboard form. “We recognized that this is a new capability for many of our users, so we wanted to provide training and solicit their feedback.”
Chief Data Scientist Loren Groff adds the team was conscientious about enhancing customer experience. “We took a ‘Yes And . . .’ approach with all of the dashboards. We’ll give you that familiar government document and we’ll also give you the new dashboard version with so much more control by the user.”
“Then there is the state-by-state, monthly breakdown,” Groff explains. “We had a congressional requirement to report accidents in Alaska monthly. The NTSB data analytics team thought, if we’re doing it for Alaska, why not do it for all the states?” (The monthly data are actually updated daily and organized by year and month.)
You can bring up a list of accidents covered in all of the dashboards, which in turn link to accident reports, and plot the accidents on a map. For GA accidents, you can see what types of findings and what recommendations the NTSB has issued in connection with accidents that meet the users’ filters.
Groff, Doble, and the Safety Research Division are taking the agency’s accident data from static tables to powerful interactive dashboards defined by the user, and in the process offering increased content and capabilities. Stay tuned as the NTSB’s dashboard capabilities continue to grow.
By Nicholas Worrell, Chief of NTSB Safety Advocacy Division
On November 28, I moderated a discussion at the Pearl-Cohn School in Nashville, Tennessee, during the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL’s) 47th Annual Conference Corporate Roundtable (CRT) School Visit. The CRT represents small and large companies, associations, and nonprofit organizations.
The NBCSL is a group of black representatives in state legislatures who are united by their roots in the black community. They work to pass laws that will make life better for all and meet occasionally to ensure that the voices of those in black communities are included in legislative decisions. They also strive to lay steppingstones for the future generations of black leaders. We at the NTSB recognize the significance of equipping and empowering the next generation of leaders.
The theme of the NBCSL conference was “The Future is Now: Meeting Challenges and Creating Opportunities.”
There is an urgency to the phrase, “The future is now,” and nowhere is that urgency more obvious than in the safety of teens in the face of one of their biggest threats: motor vehicle injuries and death. Their future—potentially spanning so many years—is all too likely to be cut short, now, in traffic violence. Participants were surprised to learn that we lose 43,000 lives on our roads yearly, and that the fatality rate is disproportionately high among both black Americans and teen drivers.
As I told the young people in the audience, their futures are on the line each time they take the wheel, ride as passengers, or even cross the street as pedestrians or share the road as cyclists or motorcyclists. The deadly effect of traffic crashes on teenage lives will only change when our culture around road safety changes.
Driving sober, disconnecting from our phones and other devices, buckling up, and obeying the speed limit are all simple—and safe—practices. However, making the right choice consistently takes integrity (doing the right thing even when nobody is watching). In road safety, knowing the way is not always the hard part. You have to go the way too.
I have long worked with the NBCSL to highlight the NTSB’s many state-level transportation safety recommendations. Our outreach to the NBCSL is in the same spirit as the NTSB’s current webinar series, Reaching Underserved Communities (ntsb.gov): a connection between the affected community and the people who are working on solutions.
Although the day focused on more than just transportation, the students asked intelligent questions, both on how traffic violence affects their community and on how they might parlay a passion for safety into a future career. In addition to making the youth aware of the NTSB and the greater federal government as career destinations, I was able to interact with NBCSL state legislators, the people who make the laws that govern our roads. And I also put in a good word for the NTSB as a workplace to aspire to.
The November 28 program helped each attendee concentrate on their own ability to grow and change the world, rather than focus on the obstacles in their way. To hear that many were interested in working for transportation safety was an additional bonus.
I felt confident that the NBCSL’s conference would motivate young attendees to strive to build the world they want to live in, rising to meet the challenges and eagerly pursuing leadership opportunities. And now that I’ve made them aware of some opportunities at the NTSB, many may consider putting their energy into making transportation safer throughout their communities and the entire country.
NTSB Safety Compass Blog 