On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America’s Newsroom,” National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) Chair Jennifer Homendy stated that while others will have to decide whether or not it would be safer if we attempted to deliver more materials through pipelines instead of shipping them through the railways, pipelines “certainly” have a lower accident and incident rate than the railways do. Homendy also stated that the nation’s freight and passenger railways are “far less dangerous” than moving materials through the roadways.
Homendy said, “Overall, I’d say, if you look at rail transportation — whether it’s freight or passenger — it is far less dangerous than moving these materials on our nation’s roads, which account for about 43,000 fatalities annually and millions and millions of crashes.”
Co-host Dana Perino then asked, “Do you think it would be safer, though, if we tried to deliver more of these materials via pipeline?”
Homendy answered, “Well, I think that’s for others to determine. Certainly, there are different accident rates and incident rates in each of the transportation modes, with aviation being lower and, certainly, pipelines being lower than rail, rail being lower than [the] movement of these materials on our roads.”
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