Abstract: The importance of independent investigations into the causes of transport accidents is still underestimated in Poland, just as the citizens’ right to broad information about safety is underestimated. Meanwhile, international experts assess that independent and integrated structures of safety organizations can increase the effectiveness of actions through the transfer of knowledge, research techniques, and the ability to implement recommendations aimed at eliminating weak links in the transport safety system.1. INTRODUCTION
Society has the right to objective opinions on the causes and circumstances of a disaster, accident, or incident in the transport system in situations where it has suffered losses in the form of citizens’ lives, suffered harm to their health, or has been threatened by exposing the health and lives of citizens to the risk of loss. Society should therefore have legal guarantees that independent investigations into transport safety can be conducted and will be carried out regardless of the circumstances in which the disaster, accident, or incident occurred. The first organization in the world to provide society with such guarantees was established in the USA in 1967. At that time, President
Lyndon B. Johnson entrusted Professor Haddon with the mission of creating an independent institution integrating research on the safety of road, rail, air, water, and pipeline transport. This is how the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was created, appointed by and dependent only on the Senate and the President.
After almost half a century of the transport safety system operating in the USA, in which the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) plays a key role, Americans are convinced that a necessary condition for improvement is the creation of an independent organization whose goal is to investigate the causes and circumstances of incidents, accidents, and disasters in all five branches of transport. Independence is so important because an autonomous organization is interested only in explaining the causes and circumstances in which a dangerous event took place and, in its actions, does not aim to determine guilt or find the perpetrator of the event. (…)
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Source: Logistyka Magazine