Transportation technology can help overcome human error

The Senate Commerce Committee meets tomorrow to discuss autonomous vehicles, also known as driverless cars.  In addition to cars, this technology is of great interest to the trucking industry, as it may one day allow for “platooning,” or caravans of driverless trucks on our nation’s highways.  “The hearing will explore advancements in autonomous vehicle technology and its anticipated benefits for Americans,” reads the website. 

 At the heart of these advantages is the belief that sophisticated technology can help correct human error to make roads safer. “Automation will have a potentially transformative impact across all transportation modes, increasing productivity, improving safety, and enhancing the capacity of existing infrastructure,” says the Department of Transportation (DOT). 

The Obama administration, which champions its rules as smart and empirically driven, recognizes the promise of such autonomous vehicle technology, proposing $4 billion in January to support driverless car research.  Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx championed the announcement, hailing the potential to reduce accidents. And the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has allowed that it will determine concrete guidelines for self-driving cars.

So it is ironic that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) – a DOT agency – is now contemplating new regulations for freight railroads which would mandate the number of train crew members, limiting the industry’s ability to realize the same productivity and efficiency benefits from the automated safety system it is implementing on 60,000 miles of rail track – Positive Train Control, or PTC. 

In fact, not only does the FRA provide no criteria whatsoever for the rule it proposed March 14, but it concedes that there is no “reliable or conclusive statistical data” to support a rule making mandating two people in a cab. Safety regulation should be based on evidence, not just-in-case anecdotes.

There is no data to show two-person crews are any safer than one-person crews. In fact, single-person crews already are in widespread use on complex railway systems around the world and on many short line railroad lines in the U.S.  Most passenger trains in the U.S. operate with one person in the cab.  The safety record of these railroads is every bit as good as two-person operations 

Even with a growing body of evidence that one-person crews are just as safe as two-person crews, today our nation’s largest freight railroads use two-person crews, and do not plan to stop that practice unless and until PTC is operational. PTC is designed to override human error.  At the point that PTC technology is fully operational, two people in a cab becomes doubly redundant and unjustifiable from either a safety or economic point of view.

Before making this rule final, policymakers should review the facts and consider a regulatory approach that allows a safe railroad industry to best apply its technology.  

The reality is that freight rail operations are safer than ever before.  FRA data show the overall the train accident rate is down about 80 percent since 1980, and roughly 45 percent since 2000.  Incidentally, while accident rates have dropped, so have crew sizes – from five-person crews in the 1970s to the current two-person crews in the early 1990s.  

The freight rail industry is investing billions of dollars in an automated system designed precisely to stand between human error and accidents. But just as DOT is enthusiastically embracing the productivity and efficiency gains promised by autonomous vehicles, it should let the freight rail industry realize the productivity and efficiency gains offered by PTC.  There is simply no safety case supporting this latest regulatory piling on, which ignores, rather than incents, the development of cutting edge safety technology. 

A government truly committed to smart regulation should focus on creating an environment that fuels safety innovation and technological advancement. 

Hamberger is president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads.