CEI: Transportation regulations stifling safety improvements

Future safety gains in the freight transportation industry “are being held back by government red tape that stifles innovation and improvement,” according to a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.    U.S. transportation regulations – both existing and proposed – are getting in the way of industry safety improvements, according to a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a non-profit, non-partisan public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government.
   Future safety gains in freight and passenger transportation “are being held back by government red tape that stifles innovation and improvement,” according to the report, titled Toward Performance-Based Transportation Safety Regulation: Focus on Results Instead of Rigid Rules to Improve Safety and Promote Innovation.
   Marc Scribner, a senior fellow at CEI and author of the report, says safety is a “major concern” for the transportation and logistics industry, “but too often, regulators make it difficult for industries to find new, innovative ways to meet their safety goals.”
   In the report, Scribner writes that regulatory agencies should focus more on performance-based rules that focus on results, rather than adherence to strict administrative rules.
   He notes that despite executive orders from presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama instructing agencies to “specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt,” federal regulators have made only limited progress in this regard.
   Scribner pointed to what he sees as a fundamental disconnect between how passenger and freight transportation safety regulations are handled, leading to an “uneven” approach by the Department of Transportation that in some cases actually hinders results.
   “The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), for example, appears willing to adopt badly needed performance-based safety reforms for passenger rail,” he said. “But when it comes to freight rail, the agency has proposed a limiting, prescriptive rule that requires trains maintain at least two crew members at all times.”
   Such restrictions “ignore the future safety gains of fully automated trains and will deter railroads from investing in labor-saving and safety-enhancing automated train technology, since they will be greatly restricted from reducing crew sizes,” according to Scribner.
   The report goes on to detail similar examples of this uneven approach to safety regulations with respect to automobiles, drones, pipelines and airlines, and recommends a set of legislative reforms to require outcome-based rulemaking.
   “The best way to improve transportation safety is to replace government micromanaging with performance goals, which would hold industries more accountable and encourage new technologies and practices that improve safety,” said Scribner.