National Transportation Safety Board seeks to help companies in tight spots

HILTON HEAD, S.C.—If your product is involved in a catastrophic road accident, Peter C. Knudson, public affairs officer at the National Transportation Safety Board, has a piece of advice for you:

"Give us a call."

The NTSB's media relations mission is to inform the public and coordinate the board's communications functions, Knudson told his audience at the 35th Clemson University Global Tire Industry Conference, held April 10-12 at Hilton Head, S.C.

Just as importantly, the NTSB can provide communications guidance to tire, auto and airplane manufacturers who are suddenly the subject of public scrutiny, he said.

"We're not there to say exactly what you should do, but we can tell you what's coming—hearings, updates, information to be released and media inquiries," Knudson said.

As the chief transportation investigatory body in the U.S., the NTSB investigates every civil aviation accident that occurs in the U.S.—normally about 1,200 annually, according to Knudson.

Highway, rail, marine and pipeline accidents are a very small percentage of the NTSB's activities by comparison, Knudson said. Only those accidents the board deems as "significant"—those that involve multiple deaths and injuries—are the subject of investigations.

"In highway accidents, that's about 15 or 20 investigations out of 7 or 8 million accidents annually," he said.

One of the most recent of those investigations involved an accident that took place Aug. 30, 2018, on Interstate 40 near Thoreau, N.M., according to Knudson.

In that accident, a 2017 Freightliner tractor attached to a 2017 Utility trailer was traveling down the highway when the left front wheel on the tractor suffered a sudden air loss. The driver lost control, crossed the median and crashed into a 2016 MCI 50-passenger motorcoach.

Eight people died in the accident, and 16 others were seriously injured, Knudson said.

NTSB media relations play an invaluable role during investigations such as the one at Thoreau, according to Knudson.

"When there is serious media interest, we handle on-scene briefings," he said. "We inform the public and generally just talk about what we're doing."

The on-scene information flow from the NTSB, according to Knudson, includes investigation briefings to families and the news media, photo opportunities and one-on-one interviews for both local and national news outlets.

An increasingly crucial function of the NTSB is releasing information on social media, Knudson said. The board has a Facebook page, and also releases photos on Flickr and videos of briefings on YouTube.

Twitter is perhaps the most important social medium for the NTSB, according to Knudson.

"We use Twitter the most," he said. "We use it on scene and live-tweet during briefings."

The NTSB has two Twitter accounts—@ntsb, an advocacy account, and @ntsb_newsroom, an account for accident information reports, briefings and updates. The organization devotes entire web pages to major investigations, with reports and links to the docket, Knudson said.

In releasing information, the NTSB always begins strictly with facts, without analysis—the information that doesn't change, according to Knudson.

"The understanding of information may change, but the information itself generally doesn't," he said.

Later, it might release the content of interviews, information from data recorders, measurements and specific times of accident events, and other on-scene findings, according to Knudson.

At all times, the NTSB shares information freely with all parties to an investigation, Knudson said. But the parties are subject to a party agreement that strictly forbids their releasing accident-related information to news media, or their commenting on or analyzing NTSB findings before the board determines the probable cause of the accident.

There have been several cases of prominent manufacturers being summarily dropped from investigations because they violated the agreement, according to Knudson. "Caution—Stay in Your Lane" is the operant metaphor, he said.

"No, you are not under a gag order," Knudson said. "The party agreement merely says that organizations which are party to receiving real-time information about an investigation must not abuse that information.

"If you are party to an NTSB investigation, a good rule of thumb is that if you have information you could talk about the day before the accident, you can talk about it the day after," he said.

If you are unsure about whether to release a certain piece of information, you can always ask the NTSB, he said.