NTSB chair says new locomotive camera rule is flawed because it excludes freight railroads
abcnews.go.comPassenger railroads nationwide will now be required to install video recorders inside their locomotives
OMAHA, Neb. — Passenger railroads nationwide will now be required to install video recorders inside their locomotives, but the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday the new rule is flawed because it excludes freight trains like the one that derailed and caught fire in eastern Ohio earlier this year.
The Federal Railroad Administration didn't respond directly to the criticism of the rule requiring cameras showing both the train crew's actions and a view from the front of passenger trains.
FRA spokesman Warren Flatau said freight railroads weren't addressed because a 2015 law Congress passed only required regulators to establish a rule for passenger railroads. But many freight railroads, including all the biggest ones that handle a majority of shipments nationwide, have installed cameras voluntarily, starting with outward-facing cameras and later adding ones showing the crews' actions.
The cameras are less common on smaller railroads. A spokeswoman for the American Short Line and Railroad Association said only a few short-line railroads have them and most of those are only outward-facing cameras.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a statement that the «FRA’s belief that the cost ‘could outweigh the safety benefits’ is an affront to every community that’s experienced a freight or freight-passenger rail disaster.”
The Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border in February did have cameras, but Homendy said that because there are no federal standards for those cameras, investigators have only 20 minutes of footage from before that derailment.
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