Monterey-Salinas Transit (MST) is pleased to announce its accident rate for FY 2006 as the lowest since the agency began keeping records over the last 15 years.
The accident rate for the year totaled 1.96 accidents per 100,000 miles, including a span of 77 consecutive days totaling 650,000 miles without a preventable accident. To put this in perspective this distance is equal to traveling from San Francisco to Boston coast-to-coast 208 times or around the world 26 times without an accident.
With record ridership this year at 4.9 million passengers, the trend for reduced accidents is attributed to the formation of MST’s Accident Reduction Task Force in July 2004. According to Allan Walker, MST Safety Training Officer, “The Task Force came up with new ways of handling safety procedures. Disciplinary guidelines were established and re-training was instituted as a response to incidents. All training became centralized through one department resulting in continuity of standards and procedures.”
The core of a bus transit safety and security program consists of: care in selecting employees, comprehensive employee training, proper vehicle maintenance, drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs and safety data acquisition and analysis.
Overall, riding a transit bus is 79 times safer than car travel, according to the National Safety Council. Though it is already a safe mode of travel, industry organizations are rallying to provide even more technical assistance to enhance current safety practices. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has developed a model Transit Bus Safety and Security Program as part of a continuous improvement program toward transit safety and security. The objective of this effort is to encourage transit providers to develop security plans and procedures as well as emergency response plans in order to minimize the risk associated with intentional acts against transit employees, passengers, equipment or facilities. The plan includes coordination with local law enforcement and with other regional transit providers, the conduct of exercises for emergency plans, and assessment of critical assets and measures to protect these assets.
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