Preserving the integrity of our nation’s transportation infrastructure, enhancing pipeline safety and eliminating substance-impaired driving are just a few of NTSB’s top transportation priorities outlined by the agency this week.

The National Transportation Safety Board today identified its top transportation challenges for 2013,  with six of the ten issues focusing on highway travel where most transportation fatalities take place. The list also includes substance-impaired driving, which the NTSB described as the “number one killer” on the list.

The NTSB’s 2013 Most Wanted List of transportation priorities includes:

• Improve Safety of Airport Surface Operations 
• Preserve the Integrity of Transportation Infrastructure 
• Enhance Pipeline Safety 
• Implement Positive Train Control Systems 
• Eliminate Substance-Impaired Driving 
• Improve the Safety of Bus Operations 
• Eliminate Distraction in Transportation 
• Improve Fire Safety in Transportation 
• Improve General Aviation Safety
• Mandate Motor Vehicle Collision Avoidance Technologies

Ending distractions in all its forms of transportation for drivers is the key focus for this annual list of the independent federal safety agency’s top advocacy priorities. According to the NTSB, distraction was the cause of multiple accidents investigated by the agency in recent years. The agency reasons that effects of distraction that cause some 35,000 annual deaths and hundreds of thousands of injuries on the roads will only continue to grow.

Calhoun Truck Lines stands right alongside these priorities. Our service is to maintain the highest level of transportation safety for each truck we put on the road. We achieve DOT compliance for our drivers and support our field operations to enhance working relationships with our truck fleet. Calhoun Truck Lines rewards drivers for their ongoing compliance and set disciplinary action for those who receive violations.

The list covers all transportation modes. There are six new issue areas — distraction, fire safety, infrastructure integrity, pipeline safety, positive train control and motor vehicle collision avoidance technologies.

NTSB Chairman Deborah A.P. Hersman said that the NTSB was releasing the list now to make driver safety a key topic available to policymakers at the state and federal levels as well as industry groups as they craft their priorities for 2013.