Accident investigator group signs criminalisation resolution
Alexandria, VA, January 21, 2010 – The Flight Safety Foundation announced today that the International Society of Air Safety Investigators (ISASI) has signed the Joint Resolution Regarding Criminalisation of Aviation Accidents, a document that was originally jointly published in the fall of 2006.
“The safety of the travelling public is endangered by overzealous prosecutors attempting to criminalize aviation accidents, which can have a chilling effect on cooperation with accident investigators ,” said FSF President and CEO William R. Voss. “We welcome these latest safety professionals joining in our statement of principles and urge judges, jurors, and prosecutors, like those involved in the unfortunate Concorde criminal case soon going to trial in France, to pay close attention. We cannot afford to let the desire by some for vengeance or publicity to come at the expense of safety for all. We need to learn from accidents to prevent them, not criminally punish well-meaning professionals and thereby risk a repeat of tragedy.”
The Criminalisation Resolution was originally developed through the efforts of the Foundation, the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) and the Academie Nationale de L’Air et de L’Espace (ANAE) in France. Signatories have expanded over the years to include the European Regions Airline Association, the Professional Aviation Maintenance Association, and the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations.
“The Executive, International Council and membership of ISASI believe that the current trend of criminalizing aviation accidents has a deleterious effect on the appropriate investigation of said occurrences, the finding of contributing factors and probable causation and the formulation of recommendations to prevent recurrence,” noted ISASI President Frank Del Gandio. “The Society fully endorses the Joint Resolution regarding criminalisation of aviation accidents.”
ISASI is a professional association formed to promote aviation safety by the exchange of ideas, experiences, and information about aircraft accident investigations and to promote technical advancement in aircraft accident investigation by providing professional investigator education for the mutual benefit of improved investigation and the advancement of flight safety.
Unless the ISASI has some actual legal clout (which I strongly doubt), lawyers will continue to stuff things up in aviation as they have done in medicine. Australia recently became the most litigious nation in the world in medical matters, a field which I have some degree of knowledge.
There is clearly no negative feedback loop which would impinge on lawyers to reduce their rates of litigation in aviation. In fact, there is perverse incentive for lawyers to litigate companies with large indemnity coverage.
The harder they litigate, the more likely they are to win hyper-inflated lawsuit payouts, and seek to win over judges with “soft” declarations of negligence so that their plaintiffs can be rewarded with some compensation for having a terrible thing happen to them.
But not everyone in life need be handed a silver platter for having stiff luck!!!
One former AMA President was successfully sued for $30,0000 because a patient (not his!) claimed that she heard him (behind a closed door) use a swearword to a colleague. Try impersonating that litigious nonsense down at the pub next time you’re there and see how many $30,000 payouts you can get. I’ll bet it’s somewhere close to zero!!!
Unfortunately, what some of these judges still have not contemplated is that by finding negligence in cases where no true negligence occured, is that it could raise the standard expected of pilots to unreasonable levels, and this could have knock-on effects that the public may not anticipate, such as sudden mass flight cancellations or delays because of trivial issues which airlines and/or pilots feel unable to be defend legally.
No guys, the only way to fend off the barbarous legal hordes is to enact strong legislative protections in all relevant nations.
And incidentally, I don’t think the motivation of “vengeance, or publicity” (para 2) has much to do with it. I think pure economic greed is the backbone of the problem.