WASHINGTON — Has the National Transportation Safety Board become the government’s “I-told-you-so” agency? After this week’s deadly subway crash in Washington, board member Debbie Hersman pointed to safety recommendations the NTSB made years earlier to replace older subway cars, which might have saved lives — if they had been followed.
A commuter airliner crash near Buffalo, N.Y., on an icy February night killed 50 people and focused attention on recommendations by the board about flying in icy weather and pilot training, some more than a decade old, that the Federal Aviation Administration has yet to fully implement.
Overall, the board is still pressing federal, state and local government agencies responsible for planes, trains, ships, cars and trucks to fully implement 1,025 recommendations — which sometimes become prescient warnings — that emerge from its accident investigations. But the board can’t order safety changes.
Meanwhile, investigators were looking more closely at a stretch of track near the site of the commuter train crash after finding abnormalities in equipment that senses trains and transmits speed commands. Equipment along a 740-foot stretch of track failed to recognize a device that simulates the presence of a train during the tests, the NTSB’s Hersman said.
Investigators planned to test the track with a six-car train Wednesday night.
