FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 14, 2003     SB-03-14

NTSB TO HOLD SYMPOSIUM ON VEHICLE RECORDERS

Washington, DC -- The National Transportation Safety Board, in conjunction with the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), will host a symposium on transportation vehicle recorders, June 4-5, 2003, in Arlington, VA.

The symposium will bring together a broad spectrum of manufacturers, operators, safety and regulatory officials, and other industry and government specialists to share the latest technical information and experiences in the use of vehicle recorders in all modes of transportation.

"Vehicle recorders are critical tools for providing information in an accident investigation," said NTSB Chairman Ellen Engleman. "These innovative technologies that will be discussed at the Symposium should provide us with vital information for future investigations."

Topics that will be explored during the two-day meeting include:

• State of the art in accident recorder technology.
• Accident recorder survivability/crashworthiness requirements.
• Video/imaging recorder technology.
• Data privacy issues.
• Acquiring data during regular commercial operations.
• Proactive use of data in commercial operations to prevent accidents and improve efficiency.

In addition, four transportation mode-specific workshops will be conducted on the afternoon of the second day. The workshops are:

• Aviation workshop 1st topic: Presentation and discussion on FedEx's experience on the installation of dual-combi recorders and the re- certification of digital flight data recorder (DFDR) systems.
• Aviation workshop 2nd topic: Presentation and discussion on the adequacy of recorder data sources (filtering, sampling rates).
• Highway workshop: Panel discussion on event data recorders, focusing on user perspectives on parameters & data accessibility.
• Marine workshop: Interactive workshop on practical aspects of safeguarding and retrieval of voyage data recorder (VDR) type data aboard vessels.
• Rail workshop: Presentations and discussion on perspectives on rail event recorder maintenance programs and practices.

The symposium, which will start at 8:30 AM each day, will be at the Hilton Alexandria Old Town, 1767 King Street, Alexandria, VA 85021. Tel: (703) 837-0440; Fax: (703) 837- 0454.

Further information on the symposium, including registration and hotel accommodations, is available on the NTSB web site at http://www.ntsb.gov and on the SAE web site at http://www.sae.org/recorder.

Media Contact: Keith Holloway
(202) 314-6100