Justice William O. Douglas described the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) as Congress’s attempt to make the railroad industry pay for “some of the cost of the legs, eyes, arms and lives which it consumed in its operations.” Wilkerson v. McCarthy, 336 US 53 (1949)(Douglas, J., concurring). While the FELA makes railroads liable to pay for injuries that they negligently cause to their employees, equally important are safety regulations that seek to prevent the injuries from happening in the first place.
From regulations outlining procedures for diverting train traffic around active work zones, to inspection requirements to ensure safe locomotives for the crews and the public at large, railroad regulations are wide-ranging. As the government seeks ways to reduce costs and deregulate industries, a large railroad trade group has submitted a 32 page formal comment asking for the elimination or modification of a multitude of safety regulations including:
- Regulations requiring 2-person crews, seeking to replace crew members with technology;
- Track Inspection requirements, seeking to eliminate visual inspections of track and replacing with technology;
- Signal Inspection requirements, seeking to eliminate testing and inspections of railroad signal equipment;
- Locomotive safety standards;
- Dispatcher Certifications, seeking to completely repeal the certification program for dispatchers;
- Hazmat Switching Rules, seeking to increase flexibility in hazmat switching rules;
- Pre-departure inspections, seeking to completely eliminate the pre-departure visual inspection requirement;
- Safety Incident reporting, requesting that only “significant” accidents need to be reported;
- Eliminating regulations that relate to yard air sources that are not operating as intended or introducing contaminants into the air;
- Modifying regulations regarding fatigue risk reductions by limiting “the ability for employees to abuse fatigue protections”;
- Many, many additional requests to modify or eliminate safety provisions.
The wide-ranging requests would create an even more hazardous environment for railroad workers, and lead to more injuries. Many railroads attempt to use regulations or the lack thereof as evidence that they are being “reasonably safe” to avoid liability when a worker is injured, and the elimination of the existing regulations will make this egregious argument even more prevalent.
The railroad attorneys at Doran & Murphy are experienced in representing injured railroad workers and proving the railroad’s negligence with and without regulations. If you have been injured while working at the railroad, contact us today.
