Responding to my recent post about Metro North Railroad’s Spuyten Duyvil train derailment, Colin O’Keefe of LXBN interviewed me regarding the culture of rail safety on our nations railroads, and the external and internal factors that make it so subpar. Rail employees are the eyes and ears of safety on the property, but recently Congress and OSHA’s Whistleblower Directorate have confirmed a national railroad culture where managers retaliate against workers who report injurious hazards rather than treating such reports as an opportunity to eliminate the root causes of those hazards. So what needs to happen? Nothing less than a sea change in rail management culture, from a culture of ‘shoot the messenger’ retaliation to a culture of non-punitive risk remediation. From a ‘discipline trumps safety’ culture to a culture where ‘safety trumps discipline.’ Here is the interview: