U.S. transportation safety agency is ditching its ‘Most Wanted List’
WASHINGTON — The federal agency charged with recommending ways to improve transportation safety is ending one of the main ways it has used for decades to highlight its positions.
The National Transportation Safety Board is retiring its Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements at the end this month after 33 years.
Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said social media and other new forms of communication have rendered the Most Wanted List outdated.
“The Most Wanted List has served the NTSB well as an advocacy tool, especially in the days before social media, but our advocacy efforts must advance,’’ Ms. Homendy said. “Freed from the structure of a formal list, the NTSB can more nimbly advocate for our recommendations and emerging safety issues.”
One safety advocate said he was sorry to see the Most Wanted List fade into history.
“It’s unfortunate,” said Harry Adler, principal at the Institute for Safer Trucking. “It helped center the public’s attention on solutions that can really address the problems we’re seeing. … As we educated the public, one of the things that helped us was being able to point to the Most Wanted List.”
Others said the Most Wanted List was a very effective tool in its day but acknowledged its time may have passed.
“I thought it was an extremely important tool when I was chairman, but things change,” former NTSB Chair Jim Hall said. “As long as they’re looking to promote transportation safety and they think there are more effective ways to do it, I support their decisions.”
And Zach Cahalan, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, said the NTSB would be “introducing a more dynamic way to communicate.”
“They have been thinking and wondering if there is a better way than a static list,” he said. “While we definitely appreciate the Most Wanted List and referred to it several times, I can’t believe under this leadership they’re going to put out a tool that is less effective than they already have.”
One of the most wanted improvements on the original list in 1990 — the automatic technology to prevent collisions and derailments known as positive train control — finally became a reality 30 years later, just days before a deadline set by Congress.
Another most wanted recommendation took much less time to take effect: Having airbags deploy with less energy, thus avoiding injuries to drivers and passengers.
In 1997, the safety board added to its most wanted list a rule to reduce the chances that vapors in airplane fuel tanks would explode. That was the probable cause of the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 shortly after takeoff from Kennedy Airport in New York City.
Other recommendations languished for years. Automatic emergency braking systems in motor vehicles were added to the Most Wanted List in 2013, 18 years after the NTSB first recommended them. But not until this year did federal regulatory agencies move ahead with proposed rules mandating their use.
“We put some things on that list that made a difference,” said Peter Goelz, the safety board’s former managing director. “Am I disappointed that it’s being shut down? Not really. Things change.”