Thank you, Madam Chair. I have very brief opening remarks.
Madam Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for inviting the Transportation Safety Board of Canada today to discuss the topic of bus safety, as the committee undertakes its study on the subject.
This issue has received significant public attention lately, notably in light of fatal accidents such as the Humboldt tragedy in Saskatchewan and the OC Transpo double-decker bus accident here in Ottawa last January.
Road accidents in general, and bus safety in particular, fall outside of the TSB's mandate as defined in the Canadian Transportation Accident Investigation and Safety Board Act.
We would only be involved if a bus accident also involved one of the four modes of transportation specifically mentioned in our enabling legislation, such as in the fatal 2013 collision between an OC Transpo bus and a VIA Rail passenger train. In that accident, TSB identified 15 causal and contributing factors and we issued five recommendations. Three of them were directly related to the safety of buses.
The first of those was for Transport Canada to work in conjunction with the provinces to develop comprehensive guidelines for the installation and use of in-vehicle video monitor displays to reduce the risk of bus driver distraction. The second recommendation was for Transport Canada to develop and implement crashworthiness standards for commercial passenger buses. The third recommendation was for Transport Canada to require a dedicated crashworthy event data recorder on all commercial passenger buses.
The board also issued a safety concern regarding the lack of any recent comprehensive study that specifically deals with the risks associated with all buses stopping at all railway crossings. Although some progress has been made regarding our recommendations, more remains to be done.
In terms of more generalized data on the subject of bus safety, what we have available at the TSB is limited. As I said, the subject is usually beyond our mandate and therefore, we do not collect or analyze information about road accidents or bus safety.
Nevertheless, we are prepared to answer questions to the best of our ability.
Thank you.