## Establishment of the Japan Transport safety Board (JTSB)

In light of great concerns among the public for their safety and public transport accidents/troubles in recent years, they are arousing high expectations toward transport accident investigation organizations. In order to respond to the expectations, the Japan Transport Safety Board (hereinafter referred to as “JTSB”) and the Japan Marine Accident Tribunal (hereinafter referred to as “JMAT”) were established on October 1, 2008 from the reconstitution of the Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission (hereinafter referred to as “ARAIC”) and the Marine Accident Inquiry Agency to enhance and to integrate the framework for investigation of causes of railway, marine and aircraft accidents.

Investigations of the causes of marine accidents had been conducted in conjunction with disciplinary actions against seafarers' licenses in marine accident inquiries in Japan. However, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has required that marine safety investigation should be separated from disciplinary actions, and be conducted with the objective of preventing accident in the future. This is now the international codification and will become effective in January 2010. The necessity for improvement of frameworks and functions of the Aircraft and Railway Accidents Investigation Commission has been pointed out at the National Diet as well, long before the reorganization and scope expansion of operations in land, sea and air.

Taking into consideration such circumstances, on October 1, 2008, marine accidents are added to the coverage of the investigation to determine the causes of accidents in ARAIC, on the other hand, disciplinary actions are under JMAT's control. ARAIC was reorganized into the Japan Transport Safety Board, which is described in Article 3 of the National Government Organization Act as equivalent to the ministries of the government, resulting in independent supervision of the frameworks, high-level planning and implementation of policies. ARAIC was upgraded from the council of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) for its employees to have an appointive power and authority to establish rules as part of functional improvement of the commission.

As a stronger independent specialized investigative agency, JTSB performs fair and neutral on-site investigations, including gathering relevant material by its staffs at aircraft, railway and marine accident sites. The factors, which related to the accidents, are analyzed scientifically and with a neutral point of view. And recurrence prevention measures are broadly publicized by JTSB. The functions of JTSB for accident recurrence prevention are improved as well, including giving recommendations to parties relevant to the causes.

There are four major effectivenesses of the establishment of JTSB:

(1) Improved investigation function for identifying the causes of accidents

The investigation of the causes of railway, marine and aircraft accidents by one organization increases utilization of specific knowledge relating to human factors that are common in land, sea and air. An efficient, organized operation has made it possible to improve the analysis of the causes of accidents.

(2) Improved recurrence prevention functions

ARAIC could only make recommendations to Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, but with the new system JTSB is able to make recommendations directly to parties relevant to the causes. Recurrence prevention measures, such as the requests of reports by JTSB from those who are given recommendations, were newly installed in the framework. In addition, now JTSB may, when the parties relevant to the cause that have been made the recommendations, have not taken any measures in accordance with the recommendations without justifiable grounds, make it public to that effect.