Railroad engineers and conductors work around large moving equipment all day long, every day. Yard crews and local switching crews are constantly moving or “shoving” cars around railroad yards and the yards of industrial customers. This process presents unique and heightened risks of injury — risks that federal safety investigators have now documented, analyzed, and formally acted upon twice in less than a year.
The NTSB’s November 2025 Safety Alert
Recognizing the serious danger shoving movements pose to railroad workers, on November 5, 2025, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) issued Safety Alert Number SA-103, entitled “Shoving Movements: Avoid the Risks.” The NTSB is an independent federal agency with a mission to “effectively promote a higher level of safety in the transportation system.”¹ Over the last 50 years, the NTSB has conducted thousands of investigations concerning transportation and railroad accidents and issued safety recommendations to promote safety.
The problem as identified by the NTSB in that Safety Alert was stark: “railroad conductors face increased risk of death and injury when riding equipment during shoving movements. Of the 20 conductor fatalities reported to the Federal Railroad Administration between January 2020 and July 2025, 14 involved conductors riding trains during shoving movements.”² The fact that so many railroad workers had been killed from shoving movements in just five years was alarming.
The NTSB Safety Alert identified the specific risks to railroad workers:
- Shoving movements that involve close clearances from nearby buildings, rail equipment, and signs can result in crush injuries and death.
- Conductors who may be positioned on lead cars can fall into the train’s path and be run over by the train.
- Slack action can lead to injury to conductors when there are sudden changes in speed on rail cars they are riding on or working near.
- Shoving movements over highway-railroad crossings create risks for conductors, especially in the industry yards of railroad customers, given they often lack warning lights or gates to warn roadway traffic, usually large trucks.
The 2025 Safety Alert made recommendations to both workers and railroads — calling on carriers to provide vehicles as alternatives to riding equipment, use cameras and technology to protect shoving movements, prohibit riding through ungated highway-railroad grade crossings, and provide hands-on training. Those recommendations were advisory.
The railroads were on notice. The deaths continued.
Update: The NTSB Escalates to Formal Recommendations — September 2026
Less than a year after issuing its Safety Alert, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took the significant step of escalating its concern into formal recommendations — a more serious and official action that calls directly on the Federal Railroad Administration and the nation’s Class I railroads to act.
On September 21, 2026, the NTSB issued formal recommendations calling for railroads to prohibit workers from riding rail equipment to provide point protection during shoving movements entirely, and requiring the implementation of safer alternatives. Since October 2020, the NTSB has now investigated 16 accidents involving workers riding equipment during shoving movements. Fourteen workers died. Two suffered serious injuries. The agency has since opened two additional investigations.
The 2026 recommendations go further than the 2025 Safety Alert in several important respects:
- They call for an outright prohibition on riding the lead car to provide point protection — not merely guidance on how to do it more safely.
- They require railroads to conduct, document, and regularly update site-specific hazard assessments before shoving movements begin, covering visibility, clearances, track and walkway conditions, grade crossings, switches and derails, and possible alternatives to riding equipment.
- They require that assessment findings be shared with affected employees and addressed during pre-job safety briefings.
- They call on the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association to inform its members about the risks associated with the practice.
The NTSB’s escalation from a Safety Alert to formal recommendations is significant. Formal recommendations carry greater regulatory weight and create a clearer record that the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and the carriers have been officially put on notice — with specific, documented findings — that this practice is killing workers and that safer alternatives exist.
What This Means for Injured Railroad Workers and Their Families
The bad news for railroad workers is that the risks of serious injury and death during shoving movements remain real and ongoing. As of September 2026, workers are still being assigned to ride the lead car during shoves. The NTSB’s recommendations are not yet binding regulations — the FRA must act to make them enforceable, and that process takes time.
The good news is that these injuries are preventable, that the federal government has now twice in less than a year formally documented what needs to change, and that railroads which continue to require this practice in the face of that documented record are doing so with full awareness of the risk.
Under FELA, a railroad is liable for injuries caused by hazards it knew or should have known about. The NTSB’s 2025 Safety Alert and 2026 formal recommendations together constitute a powerful record of institutional knowledge — knowledge that this practice is dangerous, that workers are being killed, and that safer alternatives are available. A railroad that ignores that record and assigns a worker to ride the point during a shove is building the plaintiff’s negligence case for them.
The time demands placed on railroad workers as a result of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) must also be recognized by railroads and safety regulators. Working too fast can lead to injuries, and safety should never take a back seat to profits.
If you are a railroad worker or the family member of a railroad worker who has been seriously injured or killed in a shoving movement, call the railroad injury lawyers at Doran and Murphy today for a free, confidential consultation. We have decades of experience handling these cases all over the United States. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA) protects injured railroad workers and their families in these situations and provides compensation for past and future lost wages, medical expenses, pain and suffering, and emotional distress. Learn about your rights and call our railroad injury attorneys today at 1-800-374-2144 or contact us here.
¹NTSB Website – History of NTSB
²https://www.ntsb.gov/advocacy/safety-alerts/Pages/SA-103.aspx
³NTSB Formal Recommendations, September 21, 2026 — https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/NR20260921.aspx
