Common themes in transport safety initiative

Citation

(2001), "Common themes in transport safety initiative", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 73 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.2001.12773eac.004

Common themes in transport safety initiative

Common themes in transport safety initiative

Given by Michael Starling, Principal Consultant, BMT Reliability Consultants, this contribution drew together some of the common themes emerging in transport safety and in particular in the aerospace, railway, shipping and automobile sectors.

The unifying purpose of all safety work is to avoid accidents. The first theme to be mentioned is the move from rule-based toward risk-based regulation. This development is international and reflected in regulation evolution. In aerospace, JAR 25 and JAR-E are essentially related to rules and risk assessment, while JAG-OPS and JAR 145 are addressed as risk assessment and safety management systems. Eurocontrol, for air traffic control, has a specific standard for safety management systems. For railways, certainly in the UK, a lot of regulation is rule based, based on railway group standards. In shipping, specific conventions like SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea) are rules to be applied, but the development of new regulations is based on risk assessment.

The second theme is best practice requirements. This is defined as, that for something to be in keeping with this it has to be demonstrated that all reasonable practicable risk control measures have been taken and that any further action is grossly disproportionate (in terms of cost, disruption, etc. to the amount of risk reduction), and it also adds that current industry practice risk control measures must be in place.

The third theme is the ever-developing widening of regulations. This has caused some anomalies. For example, the CAA is responsible for flight safety but not for passenger safety. The Maritime Coastguard. Agency (MCA) is responsible for ship safety and for passenger safety on these ships.

The fourth common theme is that of a direct regulation of safety. There have been many changes, the overall effect is that there is a general widening of applicability but in civil and criminal law, from "grossly negligent" to "far below reasonably expected", and from "substantial cause" to "one of the causes".

The last theme is the link with the environment. There have been many – oil spills, depleted uranium leaked in a crash, etc. Environmental standards in future will result in higher standards of operation than those developed purely for safety. The common theme is that similar standards are required in areas of transport to manage safety and environmental risk.