Confidential Reporting: FRA Pulls The Plug

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

This week we all took a big step backwards for rail safety.

Declaring that all sides were at a “impasse,” the Federal Railroad Administration decided to disband its working group on Confidential Close Call Reporting Systems, or C3RS. I was a member of that working group.

C3RS provides a mechanism for operating employees to report unsafe conditions or incidents – “close calls” – without fear of retribution so that safety data trends can be identified and commonalities can be addressed before a serious incident occurs.

“FRA appreciates the hard work and collaboration that occurred within the Working Group, but has concluded that the group has reached an impasse, and further meetings will not likely produce meaningful results,” the agency told all of us yesterday. “Accordingly, deactivating this Working Group will allow FRA and the RSAC to prioritize new efforts to advance safety in our industry. We thank the Working Group members for their input and dedication.”

The FRA’s statement was true as far as it went. But by declaring an impasse, it diplomatically avoided identifying the cause of that impasse: railroad management did not want to give up its philosophy of “Punish First. Ask Questions Later.”

One of my colleagues on the working group responded quickly yesterday, and I think their response deserves more attention.

“The failure of the RSAC Confidential Close Call Reporting (C3RS) Working Group to reach an agreement is both unacceptable and a glaring example of the systemic obstacles preventing real progress on rail safety,” my Working Group colleague wrote. “FRA’s decision to withdraw Task Number 2022-03 and deactivate the group is a direct result of an unwillingness by some in the industry to embrace a meaningful, non-punitive safety culture. This is a failure that puts workers and the public at risk.”

I won’t identify this person or their organization, only because I’m sure that neither this person nor their organization was prepared for this to be a public statement.

The confidential-reporting, safety-first philosophy, under a different acronym, has yielded extraordinary leaps in commercial aviation safety over the past half century, and that’s still true despite a string of recent fatal crashes. As my colleague notes, “C3RS is a proven tool for identifying and mitigating risks before they result in injuries or fatalities. Yet, despite nearly two years of meetings and discussions, resistance from certain stakeholders has once again derailed an initiative that could have saved lives. The refusal to implement a comprehensive, industry-wide C3RS program is a clear indication that some would rather protect corporate liability than protect workers.”

I could not agree more. Railroading is an extremely dangerous line of work, with many preventable injuries and even deaths every year. It was clear from the beginning when our Working Group was first convened that labor was an enthusiastic participant, as were the Federal safety professionals at both the FRA and at sister agencies they brought in to offer advice: the Federal Aviation Administration and NASA. But the railroad operators’ hearts clearly were never in it.

Their opening position in our first meeting started off with mythologies around close call reporting, and their representatives never wavered. The railroads insisted, without evidence, that a C3RS regime would protect dangerous railroaders, especially so-called problem employees whom the railroads continued to refer to in all of our meetings as “repeat offenders.” And no, they were never able to offer examples of any repeat offenders who used a confidential reporting system to avoid legitimate discipline.

For the record, none of us ever proposed protecting willful violations or criminal behavior, nor did any of us suggest that the C3RS process be a kind of “get-out-of-jail-free” card to be played by those with the most to lose. Not once. No railroad would ever have lost the ability to apply disciplinary measures when they were truly required, and the various proposals we offered included safeguards to deter abuse.

After a few meetings opponents then turned to a different tactic, suggesting that the aviation industry, which has been using confidential close call reporting for half a century with tremendous results and safety improvements, was somehow dissatisfied with those efforts. They also argued that regardless of anything said in our meetings, there was too little data to permit real decisionmaking...as if half a century of data was somehow not enough.

I endured several sessions listening to these hearsay claims. Those of us in favor of C3RS then called their bluff and with the help of the FRA arranged a briefing in Dallas, where the FAA’s management of its confidential reporting system is housed. The FAA program managers spent an impressive amount of time detailing all of the progress.

There was a full day of deep dives into their data, data of the sort that railroad management said they wanted and didn't have. So for FAA to “open the kimono” and share as much as they did, and to devote an entire workday for much of their program management, was an act that I found both fascinating and generous in the circumstance. To my dismay, as I walked up the aisle during one of those sessions to use the Men’s room, I found some rail operator members of the working group sitting in the back row idly flipping through Facebook on their phones rather than paying attention to the important and detailed data that was being shared for their benefit.

It was then that I knew that those representatives were just hoping to run out the clock. Last year Norfolk Southern agreed to pilot programs with several of its labor organizations (read more here, and here), and I’ll offer right now full credit to N-S for being the first one willing to step up. (And full disclosure, Amtrak and some of the commuter railroads already have versions of this kind of program.) But I warned some of my colleagues on the Working Group that the pilot program would be used to “declare victory” and avoid further progress, and that seems to be where have landed.

Nobody wants to protect bad actors. Those who should not be working in this highly technical and highly dangerous field should be weeded out. But widespread adoption of a C3RS regime, with standardized reporting and data, undoubtedly would have saved lives. I’m positive we would have identified trends – without finger-pointing – that could make operations more efficient, more safe, and dare I say it, probably more profitable, too.

Let’s see how FRA chooses to move forward on the C3RS issue. But our members should know that anything we can do to support making the railroads we ride safer is something we will always do, without hesitation.