Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and
Communications
Issue 9 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Thursday, March 26, 1998
The Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 11:30 a.m. to give consideration to Bill S-2, an Act to amend the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.
Senator Lise Bacon (Chairman) in the Chair.
[Translation]
The Chairman: This morning, we resume consideration of Bill S-2, an Act to amend the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.
[English]
We are very honoured to have Mr. Jim Hall with us. I think the biography of Chairman Hall was distributed to you, so I shall not read it. I want us to use our time to hear from Mr. Hall and then ask questions. Mr. Barry Sweedler and Mrs. Debra Smith are with Mr. Hall.
Welcome to our committee, Mr. Hall. We are very pleased to have you with us this morning. The Subcommittee on Transportation Safety was pleased to meet with you in Holland recently.
The floor is yours.
Mr. Jim Hall, Chairman, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board: Thank you very much, Madam Chairman, and honourable senators. As you indicated, I have with me Mr. Barry Sweedler, who is the head of our Office of Safety Recommendations and Accomplishments at the National Transportation Safety Board, and the chief assistant in my office, Deb Smith.
It is a distinct honour for me to be asked to discuss the functions of the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and its relationship with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada today. When I complete my remarks, I will be glad to attempt to respond to any questions the senators might have.
The NTSB was formed as an independent government agency in 1967. It was first placed within the United States Secretariat of Transportation's offices for administrative purposes. In 1974, Congress made our agency totally independent.
For the past 31 years, the NTSB has been the transportation accident investigation authority of the United States of America. The NTSB has developed its processes and procedures based on its own experience and on the experience of others who have investigated transportation accidents around the world.
Many things have changed in the three decades of the NTSB's existence, and both the policies of the board and its legislation have evolved. Some of that evolution has been prompted by changes in public attitudes, as well as technology. Some changes have come about based on the board's best judgement of what the future is likely to hold for transportation.
One of my predecessors, Jim Burnett, appeared twice before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transportation: He first appeared while the committee was considering the bill that created the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, and secondly when the committee was considering the bill that created the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board, or TSB.
I have worked with the TSB, initially as an NTSB member and now, over almost the past four years, as chairman of my agency. There are many similarities between our agencies, as there are between the nations that we represent. There are, of course, numerous differences. While I will discuss some things that work in the United States, I acknowledge that not all will necessarily be appropriate for Canada.
Both the NTSB and the TSB started with an approach to independent accident investigation that did not assign blame or liability, a principle which they later carried over to accident investigation in other modes of transportation.
Nations compete vigorously in many transportation activities. Transportation accident investigation, however, is an exception. In this field, there is extensive international cooperation. The cooperation seems to be built on a combination of professional respect, goodwill and, of course, self-interest.
Transportation vehicles carry people and products around the world. Vehicles built in one nation are likely to be used in others. We rely on each other's navigation systems, ports, fuel, airports and highways. When there is an accident, individuals and products of numerous nations are likely to be involved. They all have an interest in investigating the accident and eliminating the risks that lead to an accident, no matter where they occur.
There are, of course, at the same time, many compelling interests in determining liability. To benefit from the efficiencies of cooperation, the accident investigation procedures have to be kept as far as possible from the adversarial role of the courts and from determining blame and liability.
There are many views on what constitutes independent transportation accident investigation. A handful of nations have established what they see as multi-modal transportation safety boards. The two North American transportation safety boards appear to be unique in their degree of independence. The closeness of their underlying safety philosophy, combined with geographic proximity, has promoted a very constructive relationship between the NTSB and the TSB. That relationship starts with the Chairman of the TSB and my office. It extends right down to the professional staff of both of our agencies.
For example, Madam Chairman, we have exchanged investigators on assignments for extended periods of time. Investigators from both boards work together on many accidents and they routinely exchange technical information. The two agencies cooperate and share technology to analyse data from aircraft "black boxes." They provide information to one another for safety studies. On occasion, when there is a shared safety interest, we have developed parallel recommendations and issued them simultaneously.
The mandates and jurisdictions of the two agencies are similar, but there are, of course, some differences. The Canadian mandate to investigate incidents is more explicit than ours, and your coverage of marine accidents and incidents is a little broader than ours.
On the other hand, we have a broader mandate for pipeline investigations. With the cooperation of the states, we investigate highway accidents. In the United States, we also have an oversight role that I do not see in your safety board.
Each board has some features that reflect the needs of the nation it serves. Just how we go about our activities is probably not as important as what we are able to accomplish for the people of our respective countries. We both investigate and analyse accidents and incidents and conduct studies that point out safety shortcomings, and we make recommendations that are designed to minimize transportation safety risks.
We work together internationally. Together, we help form the International Transportation Safety Association. We work cooperatively at the International Civil Aviation Organization and at the International Maritime Organization. Our staffs belong to professional associations such as the Marine Accident Investigators' International Forum and the International Society of Air Safety Investigators. There are many other examples, but I believe that you see the overall level of cooperation and trust we have in each other's work.
There are some features in both the United States and Canadian safety boards that I personally believe should be in every transportation safety board. The boards should have a clear and easily understood mandate. The agencies need to be independent, particularly from transportation regulators and police. They need to be able to exercise discretion in deciding what to investigate and to what depth. They need the freedom to issue findings and recommendations.
The agencies should not become government regulators. The investigators need strong powers to get the information they require for their investigations. As previously mentioned, they should not determine blame or liability. They can have strong powers because their work does not lead to fines or prison sentences. They need the resources to do solid professional work that will stand the scrutiny of manufacturers, operators, government regulators, the news media and, most importantly, the public they serve. The reports of the board should always be made public if they expect to gain and hold the public's trust.
I would like to mention some new developments, ones that we have recently dealt with or that we see coming over the horizon.
The first is in the area of information management and communications. More and more information is being made available, particularly through the Internet. We have to find better ways to sift through that information quickly so that we can use what is relevant. We are improving our ability to obtain relevant information through the efforts of our International Transportation Safety Association, where we exchange information directly with other organizations that are in our business.
Communications are now global, with 24-hour news organizations such as CNN and SKYNews based in the United Kingdom. It seems that, as the amount of information increases, the public's appetite for it also increases. More and more individuals and organizations claim to be experts, and they often obtain credibility because their views are extensively broadcast on television. They have quick, glib and plausible answers to questions that can only be reliably answered by painstaking, scientifically-based investigative work.
We cannot and would not want to stop the free flow of information. Therefore, we must employ the quickest means available to get reliable information and to make that information available to the public. We must train our investigators to be thorough and careful and not to speculate. We hope, in the end, the public will learn that if they want reliable analysis, they will have to be patient. At the same time, we have to be energetic about making available the reliable factual information that we have.
The skills of our investigators, and I am sure of yours, are being challenged by rapid changes in technology and by the necessity of looking at the management and safety culture of companies, not just at the wreckage and at those involved in operations. Training has always been important in transportation. However, with this accelerated pace of change, it will become even more important in the future.
Also, people and products constantly move across international boundaries, not just between the United States and Canada, but all over the world. As the level of activity increases, accidents will occur more frequently in remote and less developed areas of the world. That applies both to United States-manufactured aircraft and to the turbo-prop and jet passenger aircraft manufactured in Canada. I had the pleasure of flying on one of those products up here this morning, a nonstop from Washington-Dulles to Ottawa.
We will both have to be able to quickly deploy our resources to accident sites around the world and ensure that there are competent objective investigations that produce timely and reliable information about the safety issues that need to be addressed. Respecting the sovereignty of states where the accident occurred will demand as much skill in diplomacy as it does in investigation.
The most recent change in our responsibility relates to coordinating federal assistance to families of accident victims. For 30 years, the Safety Board's primary mandate has been, and will continue to be, the investigation of transportation accidents. However, in October of 1996, legislation gave the NTSB this family-related responsibility for aviation disasters.
In general, under the new authority, the NTSB will provide family members with speedy and accurate information about the accident and recovery efforts, support local efforts in the recovery and identification of victims, and offer other assistance as deemed necessary. Airlines must now submit emergency plans to us and to the United States Department of Transportation for review. They are kept on file.
What brought about this change? For decades, following major aviation crashes in the United States, the unpleasant duty of notifying next of kin, making arrangements for transporting family members to a location near the accident site, and returning victims' remains has been the sole responsibility of the air carrier. The local community would respond with necessary emergency services, which were sometimes implemented by individual and group volunteers providing services such as grief counselling and food.
In January 1995, when I chaired the Safety Board's public hearing on the USAir 427 crash near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I met with the victims' families and I became convinced that something must be done to address the very valid concerns they expressed to me.
For those of you who have been involved with a major aircraft accident, I do not need to tell you that the affected airline's response lacked organization, coordination and basic compassion.
Based on Congressional testimony given in our country and other forums, we have heard numerous horror stories: of constant busy signals from the airline's 800 accident information number; misidentified remains; personal effects being mishandled; unidentified remains not being handled with dignity, including mass burials of remains without notifying families; and confidential information obtained during the grief process being used against families in United States courts.
I would hope that we can all agree that this type of treatment should no longer be tolerated. The world has changed and all of us must change with it. For instance, the recent SilkAir accident in Sumatra, and the turbulence accident over the Pacific Ocean involving United Airlines, were both major international media events. Victims' families, not just in the United States but all over, are demanding more accountability in the aftermath of accidents and incidents such as these.
Their five major concerns are in the areas of initial notification of the accident, recovery and identification of victims, disposition of unidentifiable remains, return of personal effects, and access to investigative information.
These concerns are shared by the families of victims of accidents that occur anywhere in the world. Their common human need goes beyond international borders. An additional concern in our increasingly international aviation system is the need for sensitivity to the many religions, cultures, and languages of the passengers.
Following the meeting with the Pittsburgh families, I initiated a meeting in our country with the board of the Air Transport Association, which represents the major airlines. I expressed my concern about the way family members have been treated following major accidents and I asked that they, on their own volition, develop a better way to handle these situations. I was sorry to see that, in the following months, the industry was unable to satisfactorily respond to that request.
Finally legislation was passed, following the ValuJet and TWA accidents in our country, and President Clinton's visit to that TWA accident site. The lack of action by private industry led to government intervention.
This was not our preferred course, but I think the President and Congress acted responsibly in assigning this task to someone. I believe they assigned it to the NTSB because of our long and respected history at crash sites as the eyes and ears of the American people and because we are the one federal agency that is at each and every aviation accident site in our country.
Our family assistance plan has been used four times since the passage of the law. Our new Office of Family Assistance fills a void that I previously mentioned. It coordinates and integrates the major resources of the federal government and other organizations to support the efforts of local and state government and the airlines to meet the needs of aviation disaster victims and their families.
Family counselling, victim identification and forensic services, communication with foreign governments, and translation services are just a few of the areas in which government can help local authorities and the airlines deal more effectively with a major aviation disaster.
As this committee may be aware, the United States Congress recently passed legislation amending the law that was passed in 1996 requiring foreign carriers -- there are some 323 -- flying in or out of the United States to file family assistance plans and fulfill the same family support requirements demanded by their domestic counterparts.
This was new territory for us, and we had to proceed slowly to maintain proper separation between our investigative responsibilities and our new responsibilities with the families.
Our Office of Family Affairs Staff will be more than happy to work closely with you in the future to share their experiences on setting up our operation. I have found that this program is one of the most satisfying things I have experienced my some 20 years of public service.
Madam Chairman, that concludes my prepared remarks. I appreciate the senators' attention, and I would be glad to attempt to respond to any questions.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Hall.
Could you tell us about the split in the responsibilities between the federal and the state authorities in the United States for the various modes of transport? We are particularly interested in highway transport and whether or not you run into any conflict with state responsibilities when it comes to highway accident investigation.
Mr. Hall: I will ask Mr. Sweedler to share his observations, because Mr. Sweedler has been with the board since its inception, and he can provide a greater perspective than the chairman can.
Obviously, the responsibilities in the United States in the highway area are primarily the responsibility of state government. However, the federal government has been very active in safety, both through our organization and the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency, the NHTSA, in setting overall regulations for the manufacture of vehicles. Through some of our federal transportation funding, the NHTSA has been able to affect some of the specific laws regarding safety in the various 50 states.
My perspective is partially based on my experience of working in the state government in Tennessee for six years prior to assuming this position. I worked as a principal assistant to the governor. I found in our state that most of the progressive safety legislation that was passed, whether it was in the area of drunk driving or child safety seats, motorcycle helmets, things of that nature, was initiated at the federal level. It is clearly a shared responsibility.
Our agency has received nothing but cooperation in working with the state agencies in terms of accident investigation. They welcome our involvement.
Mr. Sweedler, would you like to elaborate?
Mr. Barry Sweedler, Director, Office of Safety Recommendations and Accomplishments:I have just a few extra points. As Chairman Hall mentioned, there is a shared responsibility. The states usually are involved with the driver and any issue that has to do with the driver, and the federal government is involved with the vehicle standards.
We have been very active in the highway field because that is where most of the fatalities are. More than 90 per cent of transportation fatalities occur on the highways. We feel we can have a great impact on the highways, and we have to look at highway safety issues through our very tailored accident investigation. Certainly, on issues like the drinking and driving issue, we have made many recommendations to the state governments to improve the drinking and driving laws. We have made recommendations, following your example, on how to get drivers to increase the use of their safety belts and child safety seats.
We were very active in the whole issue of air bags. Chairman Hall actually started and led the whole national debate on the need to improve air bag safety. It has been very satisfying to us. Thousands of lives have been saved, and we are very pleased with our work in the highway area.
The Chairman: Coming back to the NTSB, how many staff do you have? How are they allocated by mode of transportation, and what kind of budget do you have? You seem to do a lot more than we do here.
Mr. Hall: We have approximately 400 staff members. Our budget this coming year is roughly $55 million. To give you an idea of our relative size in the United States government, the budget for the United States Department of Transportation this year is $43.3 billion. Our budget would fund the Department of Transportation for nine hours of one day. I have not even calculated how long it would fund the Department of Defence. It costs each U.S. citizen approximately 17 cents to fund our agency.
Roughly, Madam Chairman, 50 per cent of the resources of our agency are in aviation accident investigation and 50 per cent are divided between the other modes of transportation.
Senator Forrestall: You will appreciate, Madam Chairman, that when I first came to Ottawa, the total budget for all purposes was $6 billion dollars. I was a young man.
Thank you for coming. We are all pleased that you could come to Ottawa to help us with our functions.
The figures are staggering. I would like to discuss with you the identifying processes through which care can be extended to the families of victims of air crashes. I am happy that the United States has taken a lead in this matter.
You mentioned that you have used your office and your procedures four times. Could you elaborate a little bit? Could you tell us anything about how it was received? Have you found that it has an impact on your budgetary monies? Has it helped to ensure that the proper persons or institutions accept their responsibilities for these?
I would hope Canada would go in this direction.
Mr. Hall: Of course, we first attempted to give leverage to the existing resources of the federal government through memorandums of understanding with six of our current federal agencies. We are able to call on them for various services that might be required at the accident site.
Our Department of Health and Human Services has an excellent identification team. We had an accident near Detroit, Michigan, with ComAir, in which I believe there were 29 fatalities. You may have seen the pictures on your television here. It occurred in the winter, in December. It was horrible weather. There was a fire, and the conditions were complicated by the weather. Identification was extremely difficult. We were able to fly in a mobile morgue that is maintained in Arizona to assist in the identification. We were able to have all of the victims identified and the families able to return home within 48 hours.
We have found that families come to an accident scene to take their loved one home. In an event like that, it is one stage of the closure process that they need to go through. We were able to utilize those special services in that situation.
The largest accident we had, senator, was of course the Korean Airline accident in Guam, which actually prompted the extension of this law to foreign carriers. We had great difficulty upon arrival in Guam because of the lack of any type of plan by Korean Airlines to accommodate the families, who then came to the accident site and attempted to actually overrun the accident site.
I was very proud of our family assistance people, who were able to add some structure. Once they explained to the Korean Airlines and the representatives of the Korean government what they needed to be doing, we received full cooperation and assistance. But the lack of a plan just created chaos in the first couple of days after that particular accident.
We receive funding for seven full-time staff to perform these responsibilities. The organization is headed by a gentleman who retired from the Casualty Assistance Office of the army, so he had extensive experience in this area. We have tried to hire someone who is familiar with the forensic part of the operation, someone who is familiar with the counselling services, someone who is familiar with emergency response services, someone who is familiar with the airlines and their structure, so that we have a comprehensive team that we can send out, depending, of course, on the size of the accident. We have gone to accidents ranging from the Korean Air accident to a Scenic Airline accident, in which there were eight fatalities. In all instances, we found that the office has worked very well.
Senator Forrestall: Do you see ways of improving it? Or do you think you have a bit of a handle on it and that you would want to wait for a year or so to see how it goes?
Mr. Hall: I think we would want to have more experience. We are going to have a symposium in Washington, D.C., on September 28 and 29, to which I would certainly invite the committee and any interested people from Canada. It will be at the Crystal City Hyatt right outside Washington. It will be the first time a symposium like this will be held. We are calling it an international symposium on family and victim assistance for transportation disasters. We are going to try to really sit down and bring in the world community and share notes on what our experience has been. Airlines that are preparing these plans will have the benefit of that information, and all of us can see if there is anything that we need to do to improve the way we are doing our business.
Senator Forrestall: I would like to touch on one more area that arises out of the testimony we received yesterday. It has to do with information statistics and the absolute vital necessity of accurate and constant information, the difficulty in getting it and of storing it once you have it, and the question of who should have access to it, who should handle it, and all these other things. We learned that it makes it very difficult for professionals to draw any conclusions, for example, with respect to highway safety. As I am sure you know, the majority of our fatalities occur on the highways.
First, is there a better way to acquire, store and disseminate this type of statistic or will the web fill that vacuum as time goes on?
Second, and I guess more importantly than that, is the question of the families. It is one thing to feel badly about the fatal victim of an accident, but as you know from your experience, it is the families who deal with the loss. They do this by recovering the remains, bringing them home and burying them, after which a period of healing sets in. Where there is debilitating, traumatic injury that lingers on sometimes for years -- sometimes it has a crippling impact -- there is always that great gap between the time the costs start building and the time the insurance kicks in.
In your caring mode, have you started to pay any attention to the difficulties that arise in such situations? I realize you are getting into the civil and personal ends of things, but it seems to me that we must increasingly look at this end because it has an equal, if not greater, impact when dealing with the fatal victims of crashes.
Mr. Hall: The first part of your question, senator, is on the subject of data. I think that is probably going to be the most challenging area for government in the future. It will be a real challenge to maintain the investment in technology to ensure that the data we have is solid.
I think the challenge increases because we get more and more data. We have difficulty in our country in the highway area with what is called FARS, fatal analysis reporting system, and with the accuracy of that system. For example, in the air bag area, they have maintained statistics in our country on air bag fatalities but not on air bag injuries, but we know that air bags, while they save lives, are creating more varied types of automobile accident injuries than we have ever seen before. There are eye injuries, ear injuries, and other unique types of injuries that need to be studied, so hopefully the technology can be improved. I think that will be a continuing challenge in all the modes of transportation, and obviously in all of our lives, because the amount of data is just going to continue to increase.
Your observation on the subject of injuries out of these accidents and the time for recovery is very accurate. However, that is not an area that we as a board have looked at, nor do I think our current jurisdiction would involve us. It certainly would be an area of concern for government because it is clear that, many times, someone will be severely injured and there will be an extensive lapse of time before they will see any monetary recovery.
Mr. Sweedler has a comment.
Mr. Sweedler: You are blessed with a very good group right here in Ottawa. The Traffic Injury Research Foundation of Canada has their offices here. They have an excellent handle on the highway data for accidents here in Canada.
Senator Forrestall: But they have the same frustration.
Mr. Sweedler: Of course. We work very closely with them and rely upon their guidance and the work that they have done. They are a very good resource.
Mr. Hall: As you may be aware, we have a Web site, as does the TSB.
Senator Poulin: And the Web site is very well done.
Mr. Hall: We have now upgraded our web site. To show the committee how much importance I place on my presence here today, the NTSB is holding a hearing in Honolulu, Hawaii, today.
Senator Poulin: And you chose to come to Ottawa instead.
Mr. Hall: I chose to be here. If you go to our web site and click on the hearings and then click on the KAL hearing, you will be able to get the testimony given and the exhibits presented at that hearing today. We started that with our TWA hearing. It has worked so well that we will probably do that for all of our public hearings.
Senator Roberge: It was a very interesting presentation, Chairman Hall. I am pleased to note that our two organizations are working very closely together. It is vitally important.
I was reading the party system in your investigative process. The FAA is automatically designated by law. Who is the lead investigator once the FAA is involved?
Mr. Hall: The NTSB is the lead investigator, but the FAA is always a party to our investigations, by statute.
Senator Roberge: The whole party system is very interesting. What is the role of a board member in a major investigation?
Mr. Hall: In a major investigation, the board member goes as a spokesperson for the board, and is supposed to be the single source of information between the board's investigation through the party system and the media. Many times, a board member will be referred to as the principal investigator. That is not the case. We are there as a spokesperson for the investigation. Of course, all of the board members rotate each week as they are on call to go to major transportation accidents.
We are the spokesperson for the investigation.
Senator Roberge: So he does not chair the investigation team?
Mr. Hall: No. The investigator in charge, who is a professional staff member, will be designated as the head of the investigative team.
Senator Roberge:What role does your board play in ensuring that Americans travel safely abroad?
Mr. Hall: Through the accredited representative under the ICAO for the United States government on aviation accident investigations, we are present for the investigation and a party to the investigation of most incidents and accidents where there have been U.S. citizens or U.S.-manufactured products involved, whether it be the engines or the avionics or the structure itself, a Boeing or McDonnell Douglas aircraft.
We will be making recommendations through that process, working with the local investigators, whatever the structure is in that particular country, to try to identify problems and make changes, safety changes, if necessary, just as quickly as possible. We do not in any way rate the airlines or the countries. That is the responsibility of the FAA in our country. But through the accident investigation process, we are there to try to be sure that corrections are made and that the information is shared worldwide.
Senator Poulin: Chairman Hall, we have done a lot of studies in Canada in terms of trends. I imagine the results of our studies are very similar to yours, in terms of the growing concern of Canadians for safety in the street, home, and in all vehicles. We are extremely interested in the fantastic presentation you have made, because I think there is a lot for us to learn from it. You and your team are to be congratulated on the leadership you have taken and the innovation you have brought to the whole concern of safety.
I have two kinds of questions. One is legislative and the other regards your family assistance program. I would like to touch on the legislative side because of our role as legislators.
In reading on your web site the history of the agency, I saw that it had become part of the Transportation Department and that the enabling legislation had arrived about ten years later to really create an arms-length relationship between yourself and Congress. Am I right up to now?
Mr. Hall: Yes, you are right.
Senator Poulin: When the further changes were made, were they made to the existing enabling legislation to increase your responsibilities?
Mr. Hall: Yes. Mr. Sweedler would be a better person to answer that. I was not there in 1974, but Mr. Sweedler was.
Mr. Sweedler: You are absolutely correct. The original legislation had the NTSB as an independent agency but located, for administrative purposes, in the Department of Transportation. We had a great degree of independence but there was the appearance that we were part of that department.
In 1974, the U.S. Congress made a major modification to the legislation, which made us totally independent for all activities.
Mr. Hall: The committee might be interested to know that the actual beginning of the idea of an independent accident board in our country goes back to 1935, when Senator Bronson Cuttie from New Mexico opposed President Roosevelt's packing of the Supreme Court. President Roosevelt put an opponent in the race against the very popular Senator Cuttie. While flying back from New Mexico on a TWA flight, north of St. Louis, Cuttie was killed in an aviation accident. The Civil Aviation Bureau at that time investigated the accident, as did TWA, and came to different conclusions.
The senators were very displeased with both investigations, so they decided to do their own investigation. After several years of attempting to wade through the three different investigations, they decided that the appropriate thing to do was to put an independent board in the Civil Aviation Bureau that just did accident investigation, and that board sat over the investigation process. That was a three-member board initially. It worked so well, in terms of bringing safety through accident investigation, that in 1967 it was extended to all modes of transportation. When our Department of Transportation was created, it was set up as a separate entity within that department.
Senator Poulin: Both governments wanted to ensure that the responsibility for the investigations be given to an arm's-length agency.
Mr. Hall: That is correct.
Senator Poulin: How many members are there on your board?
Mr. Hall: There are five board members.
Senator Poulin: Are they all full-time members? Do you have any part-time members?
Mr. Hall: No, we do not. We have five full-time board members. No more than three can be members of the president's party. At least three have to have some technical background or expertise in the transportation area, and two are to more or less represent the public at large.
Senator Forrestall: If I were to offer a minor amendment to that effect, would you support it?
Senator Poulin: As you are probably aware, Senator Forrestall chairs a special subcommittee of this committee on transportation safety.
The second series of questions deals with the family assistance program. Once again, you and your team are to be congratulated. Your area of responsibility is quite clear for domestic American airlines flying in the United States. If non-domestic airlines fly over and have an accident in the United States, did I understand you correctly when you said that your area of responsibility remains the same?
Mr. Hall: Yes, you did.
Senator Poulin: What if it is an American airline flying over another country? How do you work with that other country? How does your family assistance program come into effect?
Mr. Hall: At present, it would not come into effect. If it is an accident overseas involving an American carrier it would be the responsibility of our Department of State. It has a family assistance function as well.
Senator Poulin: Do they have a similar program? I am sure it is not as good as yours.
Mr. Hall: It is similar. It was set up at the beginning really to facilitate the return of remains and things of that nature. I do not know, in light of what we are doing, whether it will be expanded or not. I do not know whether in the future they will want to try to call on our services as we call on theirs. We fortunately have not been in that position yet, so I do not know.
Senator Poulin: We had a situation in Canada a few years ago where one of our carriers, with many Canadians on board, had a very sad accident. I think it was near Ireland. We had the same situation. I was wondering what your precedent was. Thank you very much, Chairman Hall.
Senator Spivak: I want to go back to the issue of highway safety. The National Highway Transportation Safety Agency and your agency share the jurisdiction, is that correct? I would like to know how they share it.
I want to know whether you are involved in regulating speed or if that is a state responsibility. Similarly, how is truck maintenance enforced? Are you at all responsible for that?
Regarding the issues surrounding the roads in the United States, the subsidies for road building, highway building, highway maintenance, the increased truck traffic, the size of the trucks, the huge trailer-trucks and so forth, do all those things come under your jurisdiction? How does that all work?
Mr. Hall: Mr. Sweedler may want to elaborate on this after I respond as best I can. The NHTSA is just like the FAA. It is a regulator.
Senator Spivak: It does not look at safety.
Mr. Hall: It regulates and has responsibility specifically, as Mr. Sweedler mentioned, for the manufacture of automobile products, but not so much as it pertains to the operator or to their use on the highway.
We interact with them just as we do with any of the other regulators in the Department of Transportation (DOT). There are the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Office of Pipeline Safety, the United States Coast Guard and, of course, the NHTSA. In the highway area, we have two regulators. We have the Federal Highway Administration, which is primarily a program to allocate resources and money to the states, as well as the NHTSA, which is primarily responsible for safety.
As I mentioned in my testimony, we have a unique role in the United States in that we oversee as well. We oversee our federal regulators through our independent accident investigations and safety studies and provide Congress with an independent analysis of the type of job they are doing.
Speed is the responsibility of state governments, as is the enforcement of truck maintenance. However, many times the federal government will influence state regulation or legislation by using the carrot-and-stick approach. In the United States, there is pending a $230 billion highway bill that would be used for both infrastructure and transportation improvements on our highways. Many times the federal government will tie funding to the states in terms of specific things to be done in an area.
As to the issue of large trucks, in our country, as in Canada, we have urban areas as well as huge wide-open areas out west. There are different rules and regulations, primarily east and west of the Mississippi, in terms of the size and weight of trucks.
The rules and regulations regarding trucks are primarily a state function. The inspection of those vehicles is also a state function. However, both federal regulators and our agency oversee in that area.
Senator Spivak: In your investigation of highway accidents, have you made any recommendations regarding size and speed regulations? Have you found size and speed to be factors? As you probably know, many groups are worried about these things. Have you made recommendations, and have those recommendations been followed?
With regard to the highway bill, does the federal government pay for the highways or does it give the money to the states to pay for the highways?
Mr. Hall: I will let Mr. Sweedler comment specifically on the recommendations as that is his area. The highways are funded essentially through the federal gasoline tax, although there are some other appropriated funds as well. The money comes in and is placed in a trust fund and given back to the state governments.
Senator Spivak: Nothing comes from general revenues then?
Mr. Sweedler: No. In fact, there has been debate recently about taking the money that comes from the fuel tax and using it for other programs. That is being debated right now.
Congress attempts from time to time to influence what the states will do as far as speed limits, drinking and driving, the use of seat belts, motorcycle helmets and so on. As Chairman Hall mentioned, they will give incentives or hold back construction funds if the states do not do certain things. They rarely use the carrot-and-stick approach, but have done so on a number of important issues.
In our investigations, we can make recommendations. And we have made recommendations directly to the states. We also make recommendations directly to the federal agencies, depending on what needs to be fixed. If it is a problem with the design of an automobile or of an air bag, we would make the recommendations directly to the federal agency. If it has to do with some type of construction problem in a particular state, like in a work zone, we could make the recommendation directly to the state to do something about the problem.
Mr. Hall: Or we may, for example, make recommendations directly to the manufacturer. We are looking at a couple of investigations now in the heavy tanker truck area where some regulations with various stringent specifications essentially confined the fuel within the tank. However, the piping under the tank that distributes the fuel is not similarly protected. Explosions and fires have occurred in several accidents in our country as a result of the residue of the fuel in those pipes igniting. We are looking at the possibility of going specifically to the manufacturers of those tanks and making recommendations.
Senator Spivak: Who does the safety research? Is it someone from your organization? If I were to look for someone who was doing statistical analysis in terms of highway accidents and large trucks, would I look within your agency?
Mr. Hall: In most cases the regulators have the research money. Almost all of our work is done through accident investigation. The unique thing about our agency is that everything we do, whether it is a safety study or a report, is on the basis of an accident investigation.
Mr. Sweedler: This is true even though you might consider some of our work, with the accident investigation base, as being research.
Senator Spivak: Do you have any difficulty with including highway safety as part of your responsibility?
Mr. Hall: No, I do not.
Senator Bryden: To whom are you responsible and how do you report?
Mr. Hall: We are responsible to the president, although I see him infrequently, and to our congressional committees. We have an oversight committee on both the House and the Senate sides. At least once a year I will report to my committees.
We have at present two committees to which we will report: an authorization and an appropriation committee.
On the House side, Chairman Duncan from Tennessee is head of the House Aviation Committee at the moment. The person who does our appropriation is Chairman Wolf from Virginia. On the Senate side, we have Senator Stevens and Senator Shelby. I will, at least once a year, appear before those committees. I may appear again on request with respect to accidents or specific safety issues, but the most vigorous oversight of our organization is by the House and Senate and our Congress.
Senator Bryden: Your reports, I take it, become part of the public record or are tabled with the House and the Senate?
Mr. Hall: We routinely send all of our accident reports to our standing committees, yes. We will furnish them a copy of all our reports.
There is another unique thing about our agency, as an independent agency. If you are an executive department agency, your budget will go directly through the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and be presented as part of the President's budget. Our budget request is sent to the OMB, where it is then perhaps altered and submitted as part of the President's budget request, but our initial budget request also goes to the House and Senate committees. So if we request $55 million and the OMB cuts us back to $50 million, the House and Senate are aware of what our initial request was.
Senator Bryden: In the last 10 or 15 years in Canada, we have moved away from almost exclusive government control and government provision of safety oversight mechanisms. An example of this is air traffic control, and I think the same would apply to the oceans with our pilotage and coast guard control. The private sector now provides more of these services.
I believe that the United States has been using the private sector in those areas for quite some time. Is that true?
Mr. Hall: It is true in some areas. The answer is, of course, that there have been discussions about privatizing the air traffic control system in the United States. That still remains a federal function, under the FAA. However, we do have a number of small airports with towers that have been privatized and are what we call "contract towers." We do oversight of those contract towers just as we would an FAA tower in an accident investigation. So both the public and private sectors are involved, in all modes of transportation.
Senator Bryden: An interesting thing happened a number of years ago when the air traffic controllers in the U.S. went on strike and the president fired them all. I remember that because I thought it was interesting. I used to be involved in labour law quite a bit.
Can you remember, just out of curiosity, who separated the planes when they were all fired?
Mr. Hall: Again, Mr. Sweedler was there at the time.
Senator Poulin: Mr. Sweedler seems to have been born with the agency.
Mr. Sweedler: You have to recognize that not all of the controllers were fired; it was only those who refused to come to work when the President said, "If you do not show up for work tomorrow morning, you are fired." About half of them were fired. The other half were supplemented by military controllers. Also, they implemented greater separation, what they called "flow control," whereby from Washington they were able to control the flow of airplanes basically by keeping them on the ground until there was room in the air. Safety was not compromised, but things were slowed down a bit. It took quite a few years to get it back to normal.
Senator Bryden: I just experienced a similar situation in Toronto yesterday when the primary system shut down and they had to use their back-up system. We had to wait three hours on the runway to fly out of Toronto, but safety was not compromised.
I would like to ask some questions in one other area. It probably does not concern you at all, but because such a large amount of our air transportation system, in particular, is computerized, many people are very concerned about the year 2000 problem.
It has not caused an accident yet, but, to use my old farm term, the problem is that an accident appears to be waiting to happen. Do you have any authority to try to get people to work on the problem?
Mr. Hall: No, we do not, but our recommendations might have some impact. We have done oversight studies, on and made recommendations regarding, particular components of the air traffic control system: LWOS, wind shear, ASDE and AMASS, the ground-radar systems. We have found, of course, in a number of our accident investigations in all modes of transportation, that they were caused by the operator's overdependence on technology. In the future, all of us will face the challenge of having a lot of bright young people who are trained to operate the computer but not to fly the plane. As long as the computer is operational, they are fine. But we will have to make sure that they are appropriately trained in terms of their actual flying skills.
The Chairman: If any senators have more questions, we will have to discuss them during lunch.
Mr. Hall: Let me say, Madam Chairman, that if there are any other questions, your staff can forward them to my office and we will be glad to provide a written response.
Senator Forrestall: Let me ask you one question very quickly: How comforting is it to have a corporate memory at your right hand?
Mr. Hall: It is very comforting.
Senator Forrestall: I am a great believer in that.
Mr. Hall: The greatest thing about my agency is that I am surrounded by such a depth of experience and talent. I do believe, senator, that the final cut on public safety is that it is a public responsibility. I think we need to be sure that we have in government people who have the depth of experience and knowledge to know that the systems of the future are going to be a challenge both in your country and ours.
Senator Forrestall: The greatest single export is safety. That requires a culture. We are pleased that you are with us.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Hall, Mr. Sweedler and Ms Smith.
The committee adjourned.