(The Associated Press distributed the following article on September 15.)
WASHINGTON — States should install stop signs at unmarked rail crossings and improve the qualifications of school bus drivers to reduce a threat that many pupils face while riding buses, the National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday.
Adding safer railroad crossings to its list of most-wanted safety improvements, the board said it would lobby state governments to install stop signs at crossings that lack gates or lights and to require better training and oversight of bus drivers.
Vehicles and trains collide an average of nine times a day. In the first five months of this year, there were 1,205 crashes and 155 deaths. Four of the accidents involved school buses.
The nation’s 82,000 crossings without gates present the greatest danger; their accident rate is seven times that of crossings with gates that block vehicles.
“School buses transport our most precious cargo – our children – who should be ensured safety at all points in their journey from home to school and back,” NTSB Chairman Ellen Engleman Connors said.
The safety board, which investigates transportation accidents and advocates ways to prevent them, draws up a wish list every year to focus attention on recommendations it deems most important. For the first time, the safety board this year is dividing its recommendations into two parts.
On Tuesday the board voted on the first set of safety improvements, all of which would require state action. Later the board will vote on recommendations aimed at the federal government.
The five board members will seek support for their recommendations over the next year by testifying before state lawmakers, meeting with governors and building support among advocacy groups such as the National Safe Kids Campaign.
As part of its annual review, the safety board dropped a recommendation that automakers build child restraints into the back seats of cars. The reason: research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that built-in child restraints aren’t safer than portable car seats and booster seats, which parents like better, said Elaine Weinstein, director of the NTSB’s Office of Safety Recommendations and Communications.
“Parents prefer to have the add-on constraints that they can take out of their car, put in Granny’s car, put in the car pool,” Weinstein said.
The remaining safety recommendations, which target automobile driving and recreational boating, have appeared on the list before, some for many years.
It’s been seven years, for example, since the NTSB first recommended that states enact laws to allow police officers to stop and ticket motorists solely for failing to wear seat belts. In 29 states, police cannot ticket a motorist for not wearing a seat belt unless the driver has been pulled over for another traffic offense.
The board’s other most-wanted safety improvements for 2004 include:
-Requiring booster seats for children age 4 to 8 riding in cars.
-Encouraging all states to provide graduated driver’s licenses for younger drivers, enact new drunken-driver laws to curb underage drinking and driving and prevent new young drivers from driving late at night.
-Improving boating safety by requiring life jackets for children, mandating safety lessons for people who rent personal watercraft and requiring safety education for boat operators.