WASHINGTON — More and more airplanes, vehicles and people erroneously are entering runways, increasing the chance of a "catastrophic accident," a federal safety official told lawmakers.
In almost 60 percent of the 429 cases last year, an airplane pilot made a mistake. While private planes rather than commercial carriers made most of the errors, the threat of a major accident is real, the acting head of the National Transportation Safety Board told lawmakers Wednesday.
Carol Carmody said there have been few collisions or fatalities. Nonetheless, she told the House Appropriations transportation subcommittee, "The possibility for a catastrophic accident only increases with time if the rate of errors is not reduced."
The head of the Federal Aviation Administration, Jane Garvey, said her agency was working to reduce the number of runway incursions. Steps include better communication between pilots and air-traffic controllers, changes in airport operations and training courses on runway safety.
She said those efforts were "one of the most important FAA safety initiatives."
In 1999, there were 322 runway incursions, FAA figures show. During January and February, there were 152 incidents, compared with 150 during the same two months in 2000.
The Transportation Department inspector general has noted that the increase comes at a time when the number of flights is increasing. The Air Transport Association, the trade association for the major airlines, said there were 8.6 million departures in 1999, up from 8.3 million in 1998.
Carmody said the FAA has failed to develop the technology needed to reduce the problem and has not adopted some NTSB recommendations.
For example, the FAA has yet to require that controllers use standard international phrases better understood by pilots who are not native English speakers, and the FAA continues to allow planes to wait on active runways even when visibility is limited, Carmody said.
Garvey said the FAA was looking at the problem and hoped to have a program in place this summer.
In another matter, Garvey reported that the FAA and its parent agency, the Transportation Department, finally have agreed on a standard for reporting delayed flights. From now on, a flight will be considered late if it reaches the airport gate at least 15 minutes later than its scheduled arrival time.
The subcommittee chairman, Rep. Harold Rogers, R-Ky., had pressed for the uniform standards at a hearing earlier this month on airline delays.
"Now we can begin to rank the airlines," he said. "The consumer is entitled to know which airline has the best record with delays."
In other transportation safety news:
TRAIN DERAILMENTS: The number of train derailments — like the recent Amtrak accident in Iowa that killed one person and injured 96 others — have increased by nearly 20 percent over the past four years.
Both the Federal Railroad Administration and the Department of Transportation's inspector general have found poorly maintained track and inadequate inspections by the railroads could be partly to blame.
The number of railroad industry inspectors has been reduced, and federal and state governments have only 550 people to make sure that the industry is adequately checking 230,000 miles of track.
FRA's associate administrator for safety, George Gavalla, said the agency has focused its efforts on heavily used tracks and rail yards and all tracks that carry passengers and hazardous materials. On those tracks, accidents are down, he said. Many of the derailments occur in yards when crews assemble train cars.
"We concentrate on where we think the risk is," Gavalla said.
Overall, FRA statistics show that the number of derailments on all tracks and rail yards rose 18 percent between 1997 and 2000, from 1,741 to 2,059.
"Like any big business, railroads will try to cut corners," said Steven Moss, a partner in the California consulting firm of M. Cubed, which studies transportation safety. "They allow their track and other stock to depreciate and get rundown and don't make their proper safety investments until they are forced to do so." Railroad industry officials reject any thought that they are skimping on safety. During the same four-year period, deaths from train accidents dropped 41 percent, from 17 to 10.
"The rail system is extremely safe," said Tom White, a spokesman for the Association of American Railroads, the trade group for the large railroads. "There aren't any widespread track defects. There certainly is no indication of any safety problem out there.
"Accidents don't do anything good for us. We have every incentive in the world to operate as safely as possible."
While states inspect highways and bridges, the railroad industry inspects its own tracks. Overseeing the railroads' work are just 400 federal and 150 FRA-trained state inspectors.
Earlier this month, Amtrak's California Zephyr, en route from Chicago to Emeryville, Calif., with 257 passengers and crew aboard, went off the track in Iowa shortly before midnight.
The derailment occurred in the area where a rail defect had been detected and patched, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
In December, more than 20 cars of an eastbound Norfolk Southern freight left the tracks, snarling rail traffic and forcing Amtrak to find alternate transportation for 1,000 passengers traveling between Chicago and New York. Local officials blamed the accident on a broken rail.
"If the railroads are doing well at their own inspections, then you don't really need a lot of inspections by the federal government," Moss said. "But none of those things seem to be the case right now."
Gavalla said deaths and injuries along heavily used tracks are down since the FRA in 1998 began focusing on those routes. Between 1998 and 2000, there was one death and 45 injuries from accidents blamed on track problems, as compared to four deaths and 116 injuries during the previous three years.
The FRA began auditing one major railroad, CSX, after a series of derailments.
The agency found that the company reduced the number of inspectors and increased the amount of track the remaining employees had to cover. The FRA found that some CSX inspection reports "did not reflect the conditions" found by the agency's employees.
"The vast majority of track defects detected during the audit could have been detected and repaired with better track inspection and track maintenance practices," the FRA audit said.
The FRA has come under fire as well. In January, the Department of Transportation inspector general, who is examining FRA's safety program, noted "shortfalls in ... enforcement of identified safety deficiencies, such as widespread track defects."
Acting Federal Railroad Administrator Mark Lindsey said the safety program was still a work in progress. "Like all programs of this nature, it continues to be refined as strengths and weaknesses are identified," he said.
TRAFFIC FATALITIES: The number of people killed in traffic accidents increased slightly last year, partly due to yet another jump in fatal motorcycle accidents.
Federal estimates released Thursday show that after many years of decline, motorcycle deaths steadily increased from 1997 to 2000, growing 27 percent in the three-year period.
Last year there were 2,680 motorcycle deaths, according to estimates by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That's 208 more than in 1999, enough to offset the 188 additional traffic deaths last year.
The rate of death per miles traveled on the nation's highways increased slightly last year for the first time since 1977. There were 41,800 fatalities, or 1.6 deaths per million miles traveled, compared with 1.5 in 1999 and 3.3 in 1977.
Besides motorcycle fatalities, there were increases in deaths of teen drivers. Alcohol-related fatalities rose from 15,786 to 16,068 but remained at 38 percent of total traffic deaths — an all-time low.
There were drops in the deaths of children under 5, pedestrians, people involved in crashes with large trucks and occupants of vehicles that roll over. However, for occupants of less-stable sport utility vehicles, rollover deaths increased 2.8 percent.
NHTSA uses the statistics to plan public awareness campaigns, set funding priorities and focus its energies on at-risk populations.
"These statistics underscore the challenges facing this country in highway safety," Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said in a statement. "Safety is an individual as well as government responsibility, and we must work together to improve it."
The figures are based on data collected by police at accident scenes nationwide. The preliminary numbers use statistics from the first nine months and then estimate a total for the year. An exact tally will not be ready until July.
NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson said agency officials were waiting for final statistics before drawing too many conclusions, but they were particularly concerned about the motorcycle deaths.
He said there has been a steady rise in the age of riders getting killed and the size of the bikes involved in fatal accidents.
"It may be lack of experience, it may be lack of training, it could be a lot of things," he said. "In some cases, it could be drinking and riding, which is never a good combination. If there is any situation where you need all your faculties, it's riding a motorcycle."
Steffanie Gunn, a spokeswoman for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation that trains riders around the country, said there has been a trend of baby boomers and other adults taking up riding after several years off a bike.
"We are trying to get the word out to the them to get some retraining," she said. "It's not like riding a bicycle."
Motorcycle deaths reached a low point in 1997 with 2,116, or 21 deaths for every million miles they were driven in America. That was less than a third of the rate from 20 years earlier.
Since 1997, at least four states — Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky and Louisiana — have repealed their mandatory helmet laws for adult drivers, according to Allan Williams, chief scientist for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
A Transportation Department study published last summer shows that after the change in Texas and Arkansas, helmet use dropped and injuries and fatalities increased.
"Obviously, it makes a big difference wearing a helmet or not as to whether you are going to survive a crash," Williams said.
Meanwhile, USA Today reported in Thursday's editions that a study done for it by NHTSA shows that fatal crashes involving 10 or more vehicles increased over the last decade.
It said there were 80 such crashes in the 1990s, compared to 74 in the 1980s. By contrast, there was a 16 percent drop in fatal accidents overall in the '90s compared to the '80s.