It’s probably something you don’t want to think about when you board a plane: whether or not the aircraft you’re traveling in is mechanically sound. The Federal Aviation Administration has leveled a half million dollar fine against a company it said deliberately falsified documents attesting to the airworthiness of the ball bearings it was selling.

All six crew members aboard the commercial diving vessel Conception were asleep at the time fire broke out aboard the 75-foot commercial diving vessel Sept. 2. One crew member and all 33 passengers perished when the ship sank in Platts Harbor off Santa Cruz Island. Those stark facts are in the preliminary report issued yesterday by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) on the incident, which occurred on the last night of a three-day diving trip to the Channel Islands.

Traffic signals in the sky? Not quite, but federal agencies are developing a traffic management system that will allow drones to safely fly at low altitudes (below 400 feet) in airspace where Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) air traffic services are not provided – without interfering with other air traffic. In demonstrations conducted recently as part of a pilot program, the FAA, NASA and partners, drones conducted a variety of operations at three test sites.

The National Transportation Safety Board issued a Safety Recommendation Report as part of its ongoing investigation of the fatal, March 23, 2018, crash of a Tesla in Mountain View, California. In its report the NTSB issued a safety recommendation to the California State Transportation Agency calling upon the organization to develop and implement a corrective action plan that guarantees timely repair of traffic safety hardware and includes performance measures to track state agency compliance with repair timelines.

Grade inflation in school makes it difficult to distinguish who is actually achieving in the classroom. The federal government’s vehicle safety rating system suffers the same problem. Today, 98 percent of all vehicles tested receive four or five stars for crashworthiness. Consumer advocates and safety experts say it’s time to raise the bar for the New Car Assessment Program, which hasn’t been updated in nearly 10 years.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wants more warning signs on subway trains, after investigating the death of a child who fell between the railcars of a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) subway train. The incident occurred on September 23, 2018, on a southbound train traveling train between the Alleghany Station and the North Philadelphia Station on the Broad Street Line.

While the military is working on weaponizing drones – including equipping them with machine guns – the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is warning the general public that attaching a dangerous weapon to a drone and sending it skyward is illegal. Nonetheless, some drone owners have attached guns, bombs, fireworks and even – according to the FAA – flamethrowers to their drones.

Older workers (those ages 55 and older) bring extensive skills, knowledge, and experience built over the course of a lifespan. On the flip side, their driving may be affected by age-related physical and mental changes – many of them perfectly normal changes. Employers cannot avoid the issue of aging drivers because by the year 2020:

In the wake of revelations that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) allowed aircraft manufacturer Boeing to handle the safety analysis for its airliners – revelations that followed two fatal crashes of Boeing’s 737 MAX, the U.S. Department of Transportation is firming up its new Safety Oversight and Certification Advisory Committee (SOCAC).

An investigation into a fatal plane crash Saturday in New Orleans will be made more difficult by the fact that much of the wreckage was consumed in a post-crash fire. Nevertheless, a senior air safety investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is on the scene, sifting through the evidence and interviewing witnesses.