Jennifer Homendy, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), will tell lawmakers that she is dedicated to getting approval for safety recommendations and keeping a close eye on federal agencies.
The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee is having a meeting on Wednesday to talk about President Joe Biden’s choice of Homendy to continue leading the board that investigates accidents involving air travel, trains, boats, pipelines, and highways.
“When I’m at the scene of an accident, my main job is to talk to the families during what is often the worst day of their lives. That’s why I work so hard to make sure NTSB safety recommendations are followed,” Homendy will say, according to her written statement. She promises to keep fighting “as a strong supporter for making transportation safer.”
Homendy was at the scene for the recent collapse of a bridge in Baltimore and the emergency with an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 plane on January 5th, caused by a problem with a door panel.
Before leading the NTSB, Homendy worked as a senior staff member for lawmakers, focusing on transportation issues.
She will tell senators that in 2023, the NTSB hired 71 new people, a big increase from the 7 they hired in 2017. This brought the total number of staff to 430. The NTSB looks into about 2,200 cases each year in the U.S. and 450 cases in other countries, covering all types of transportation, according to what Reuters saw of her testimony.
Last month, Homendy criticized Boeing for not cooperating in an investigation into a problem with a door on one of their planes. Boeing later provided the information Homendy requested. Boeing said it did cooperate.
Homendy has also called for more action after several near-miss incidents in aviation safety. She asked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to make it mandatory for all planes to have cockpit voice recorders that can save 25 hours of data. Right now, they only save two hours.
She has also pushed for better safety measures for trains after a derailment in Ohio in February 2023.
Before, Homendy criticized the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for not making sure that driver assistance systems like Tesla’s Autopilot are safe.
NHTSA didn’t agree with the NTSB’s suggestions. They said drivers should always pay attention while driving, but they did ask Tesla to recall 2 million vehicles because Autopilot didn’t have enough safety measures. Tesla said they didn’t agree with NHTSA’s decision but would update their software to help drivers use Autopilot more safely.