[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 15, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2499-H2500]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            RAILROAD SAFETY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, we have had in this Nation in recent weeks 
several high-profile train accidents, one in Southern California and 
one in Florida. In light of these accidents and in light of ongoing 
problems with railroad safety, I have asked the chairman of the 
Subcommittee on Railroad on the Committee on Transportation and 
Infrastructure, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Quinn), and his 
ranking member, the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Clement), to hold a 
hearing and consider new legislation on railroad safety.
  As my colleagues know, an Amtrak auto train crashed and derailed near 
Crescent City, Florida, last month. While the National Transportation 
Safety Board is still investigating, we have to wonder if the four 
deaths and over 100 injuries could have been prevented by the previous 
enactment by this body of real railroad safety legislation.
  In the Southern California crash, a Burlington Northern engineer and 
conductor missed a yellow light that

[[Page H2500]]

should have signaled them to slow their freight train down. Instead, 
they barreled head on into a Metrolink commuter train, killing two 
people and injuring almost 200 more. We simply cannot tolerate any more 
of these preventable accidents.
  Various investigators in the media have looked at these accidents. In 
Los Angeles, the KCBS station said in a report: ``Apparently there was 
no warning, no audible alarms, no automatic breaking system on the 
Burlington Northern train in Southern California. It all came down to 
one yellow traffic light and only two pairs of eyes. If they had seen 
that yellow signal, they would have had time to stop and prevented the 
accident.''
  According to the Federal Railroad Administration, the number one 
cause of train accidents today, and there is one every 90 minutes in 
this country, Mr. Speaker, is human error. And most of that human error 
comes from fatigue. We know that. And yet this body has not acted.
  The leading expert in this Congress on railroad safety is my good 
friend and colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar). He 
has introduced in the past, and he will introduce again tomorrow, a 
bill which should have been enacted many, many years ago. This year it 
is called the Railroad Safety Reform Act of 2002. The gentleman from 
Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) and I will introduce this tomorrow in this 
body.
  The bill goes into fatigue of employees of railroads; it goes into 
how employees and witnesses ought to be protected against any 
intimidation by railroad owners. It talks about grade crossing safety 
and passenger service safety standards, rulemaking and enforcement, and 
talks about technology. Unfortunately, my colleagues, the technology on 
railroads in this Nation today, the freight railroad system 
specifically, goes back to the 1930s.
  We have to do a better job of protecting both the employees and our 
constituents from railroad accidents in the future. We can regulate, as 
we do with the airline industry, hours of work, amount of rest that is 
needed, amount of warning before people have to go on in shifts. Today, 
there are no such schedules. People can be required to go to work with 
just 2 hours' notice. If they work less than 12, they only have 8 hours 
off the next day. If they work more than 12, they are only guaranteed 
10 hours off. These rules do not even take into account travel time 
from the worker's home. So the folks who are driving these trains, who 
are working as conductors, can be dead tired, literally dead tired, 
with the rules that we have today.
  If I may quote one more time, Mr. Speaker, from the KCBS-TV report. 
They interviewed several employees from trains that have had accidents, 
and they acknowledge that they are tired. Their eyes are open, but they 
are just not there. There was one time a guy had fallen asleep and 
looked over and found his fellow conductor had also fallen asleep. Both 
of those in the locomotive were asleep at one time. One of the 
engineers says he averages 330 workdays a year.
  My colleagues, we have to take these accidents seriously. Let us have 
this hearing. Let us mark up the bill of the gentleman from Minnesota 
and let us pass the Railroad Safety Reform Act of 2002.

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