Canadian Pacific announced August 25 that it welcomes the release of the full proceedings from the Transportation Safety Board's (TSB) recent Transportation Safety Summit and urges government officials to take action on Locomotive Video and Voice Recorders (LVVR).
CP says it supports the need to implement LVVRs in Canada, which can aide in incident investigation but have also been proven to proactively change in-cab behaviour to prevent incidents in the first place. CP uses LVVR technology in 15 of its locomotives in the U.S. The technology is also being used by others in the U.S. with studies showing a 40% reduction in collisions per million miles travelled.
"I attended the summit and was heartened to see so many thoughtful people from government and industry in one place to discuss something we are passionate about at CP – safety," said CP's President and Chief Operating Officer Keith Creel. "LVVR was again discussed at length as an important, proactive means to improve safety and I urge Minister Garneau and his staff to heed the advice of experts and move forward with this meaningful change."
In addition to attending the Safety Summit, Creel met with Canada's Transport Minister Marc Garneau in early June. Currently, on-board recordings are privileged and can only be used for post-occurrence investigations by the TSB. Therefore, legislative change is required in order for railways to be able to use this technology to prevent accidents and increase safety.
Creel believes the cameras – even without audio – would ensure crews were following operating rules and not texting, sleeping or engaging in other prohibited activities. "This is the number one safety improvement opportunity available," Creel said. "After each human caused derailment I ask myself, 'would LVVR have prevented this?' In the name of safety, it's time to move forward on this."