Trains, Planes and Negligence

Here we go again. I have said it before and I say it again - safety self-regulation by industry will ONLY work if a safety mindset is in place within the industry. 

Safety Management System, which was instituted to off-load the bother of inspections by Transport Canada, has been a massive failure in the train and air travel industries. Just ask Dave Winter what he thinks of SMS.  He quit his job as a federal aviation inspector over the issue.  (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/11/08/airline-safety-system-flights.html)

For those who do not understand SMS, let me offer you a simple explanation.  It is a voluntary program whereby train and aircraft operators do their own safety inspections and then submit paper work to that end to Transport Canada.  As long as you file the paper work, regardless of whether you actually did the inspection or fixed problems, then you are SMS compliant.  It is a bit like asking criminal to turn themselves in rather than having police actually solve crimes.

The most recent interviews I have seen of MP Olivia Chow concerning this have been spot on. Neither the Cons nor the Libs have a clue or the cahones to tell the truth. 

The basics of the disaster in Lac Megantic are to be found in Transport Safety Board reports going back as far as 1994. 

Single hulled tanker cars that have been called defective designs... a decision to allow a 77 car train with multiple engines to be attended (or not) by one engineer... driving trains over tracks that were not designed for the current weight of cars and materials... and on and on.  These are the causes of Lac Megantic.  One does not have to wait 6 months until a formal report is released in order to act on these issues.

How many more Canadians need to be slaughtered before action is taken?