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SAFETY -
A Global Perspective
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SPEECH
DIRECTORY:
SAFETY AT IAIS
History
New Plan
Summary
Results
Post 9/11
SAFETY OVERSEAS
Local Conditions
Safety Regulation
Definition of Incidents
Varied Needs
Diverse
Environments
Results
RDC's
Philosophy
CONCLUSION
Q & A SESSION
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
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(Mr.
Posner’s remarks)
They
say you should judge people by the company they keep and I am proud to
be a colleague of Denny Miller. Denny
is truly reflective of what we are trying to do at Railroad Development
Corporation (RDC). The best
thing that happened in 2004 was not that RDC ended up owning 100% of the
Iowa Interstate Railroad, but that we won the Harriman.
Safety
at IAIS - Post 9/11
First I have been
asked to talk about what life is like at the Iowa Interstate after
September 11th and how we have changed our priorities given
the world that we now live in.
Therefore I took the liberty of putting our priorities in this exhibit (Table
B) so you can see how things have changed in this new environment. Basically things have not changed at all.
We are still focused on what we believe to be the biggest risks,
which are the day-to-day Railroading 101 challenges that we all face.
This means: rules compliance, safety culture, operating
discipline, etc. Just as in
the past, we work with local authorities on things like grade crossings
incidents, hazardous materials, etc.
We’ve added terrorism to the bottom of the mix but Railroading
101 was the priority and it remains the priority.
Table B
| IAIS
PRIORITIES (descending order) |
| PRE-9/11 |
POST-9/11 |
| 1. |
Safety
Culture |
1. |
Safety
Culture |
| 2. |
Operating
Discipline |
2. |
Operating
Discipline |
| 3. |
Liaison
with Local Authorities |
3. |
Liaison
with Local Authorities |
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-
Grade Crossings
- Hazmat
- Trespassing Incidents |
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Grade Crossings
- Hazmat
- Trespassing Incidents
- Terrorism |
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Safety Overseas - Local
Conditions
Now I would like to
get into the overseas side of our business.
To give you an overview of how safety fits in the international
arena, I would like to make 4 major points:
-
There
is a relatively short history of safety regulations in most
countries.
-
If
you go from country to country, there is an inconsistent definition
of incidents.
-
There
is a varied definition of what needs to be accomplished.
- The
operating environments are very diverse, meaning highly varying
operating hazards in each of the countries we operate.
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Safety
Overseas - Short History of Safety Regulation
Most
of the railways of the world, at least in the early 1990s, were
government railways; in North America we have one of the few
environments in which private sector railways flourished.
As a consequence, when national railways which had historically
regulated themselves were privatized, there was a need to create a
regulatory body to replace what state railways used to do in regulating
themselves. On a
country-by-country basis there have been regulatory agencies set up;
some are more sophisticated than others.
Two examples are OSITRAN which was formed in Peru to regulate the
three privatized railways, and in Estonia the ERA, the Estonian Railway
Administration which is the Estonian version of the FRA.
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Safety Overseas -
Definition of Incidents
When
you are comparing North American railways with foreign railways, how do
you benchmark how well the foreign railways are doing safety wise versus
the North American railways? I
think the answer is that you can’t.
(We’ll get into that later.)
One factor to think about is that incidents have been inconsistently
defined; for example, in many environments reporting is either
non-existent or poor. On
the opposite end of the spectrum, in Estonia there was a very
disciplined system. In
fact, if you got hurt on the way to work, that was a reportable injury.
The logic was, ‘if you had not employed this person, you would
not have exposed them to the danger of slipping on the sidewalk.’
That is the way the reporting works and that is the environment
that we stepped into. Again
I would like to make the point that that makes benchmarking impossible
and so it is truly an “apples-to-oranges” comparison.
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Safety
Overseas - Varied Needs
There is also a varied
definition of safety culture; for example, as you go from place to place
in different countries the safety culture and operating discipline is
very high. One example of
that is Estonia which is a former Soviet country and so was subject to
an extremely high operating discipline that was the tradition of Soviet
Railways. On the other hand
in Guatemala, where the railway that was literally a walking zombie
until it was finally closed, there was very little in the way of
operating discipline, safety culture, pride or any of the things that
drive us in the USA.
And in parallel with the wide variety of
operating conditions that different railways face, sometimes there are
conflicting cultures. For
example, in the Andes the macho culture is: “we are railroaders and we
will get through despite landslides or other natural disasters,” which
is a very important and positive aspect of railway culture, but
sometimes it does conflict with safety culture.
That is one of the things we get into when we go into a new
country. These are examples
of why benchmarking against North American practice is impossible.
I am choosing my words carefully; I’m not saying difficult,
I’m saying impossible. This
is truly an apples-to-oranges comparison.
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