The Independent Safety Board Act (Pub. L. 93−633) is a 1974 law that ended all ties between the

National Transportation Safety Board The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is an independent U.S. government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation. In this role, the NTSB investigates and reports on aviation accidents and inci ...

and the U.S. Department of Transportation. It was created to avoid possible conflicts between agencies.

Background

The National Transportation Safety Board originated in the Air Commerce Act of 1926. From that year onwards, Congress required civil aviation accident investigations to be conducted under that law. In 1967, Congress merged the transportation agencies into the U.S. Department of Transportation and established the NTSB as an independent agency within DOT for administrative support. The NTSB is chiefly known for its oversight in aviation accident investigations. From 1926 onwards, Congress required the investigations of civil aviation accidents under the Air Commerce Act (Pub. L. 69-254, 44 Stat. 568). Later on, Congress created other laws as well, which created the

Civil Aeronautics Board The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was an agency of the federal government of the United States, formed in 1938 and abolished in 1985, that regulated aviation services including scheduled passenger airline serviceStringer, David H."Non-Skeds: T ...

and the Federal Aviation Agency, in which the latter became the

Federal Aviation Administration The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic ...

. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which created the Federal Aviation Administration, gave the Civil Aeronautics Board duties investigating civil aviation accidents. In 1974, as the Airline industry expanded, Congress created the Department of Transportation Act of 1966, which created the NTSB under the Department of Transportation. This Act gave the NTSB duties previously reserved for the Civil Aeronautics Board. But the NTSB started to do investigations of the FAA. So therefore, Congress passed the Independent Safety Board Act to avoid these conflicts. The Act also prohibits the use of any portion of an NTSB report as evidence in a lawsuit related to matters discussed in the report and, with few restrictive exceptions, bars discovery, admittance into evidence, and public release of transcripts or recordings of a "cockpit or surface vehicle...voice or video recorder" if not made public by the NTSB.See the boilerplate message contained in most NTSB reports, eg.:

References

{{Authority control United States federal transportation legislation National Transportation Safety Board Transport safety 93rd United States Congress