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It Takes a Village: In the Air or on the Ground, Safety Takes Teamwork · Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations

• 0:14
  Allan Rutter: Howdy everyone. Welcome to Thinking Transportation--conversations about how we get ourselves and the stuff we need from one place to another. I'm Allan Rutter with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. As a transportation nerd, I understand that the safety risks of driving to the airport are greater than the safety risks of traveling in the airplane that leaves the airport. While I appreciate the mechanics and physics involved in commercial aviation at a visceral level, the act of moving hundreds of miles per hour, 30,000 feet in the air just seems unnatural. Yet, as commercial aviation has become more affordable, it has also remained remarkably safe. Today, we'll be talking about how the National Transportation Safety Board works to make sure that airline travel stays safe. We are joined by Robert Sumwalt, who was a member of the National Transportation Safety Board from 2006 through 2021, and chairman from 2017 to 2021. Robert, welcome to our podcast and thanks for making time amidst your remarkably busy travel schedule.
• 1:27
  Robert Sumwalt: Al , thank you. It's wonderful to be with you.
• 1:30
  Allan Rutter: So let's talk a little bit about something you may be uncomfortable with. Let's talk about yourself. How does a young man from Columbia, South Carolina, get involved in aviation and ultimately find himself on the National Transportation Safety Board? So, you attended the University of South Carolina as a resident of the town?
• 1:49
  Robert Sumwalt: That's right. I'm from Columbia, South Carolina, and so I did attend the University of South Carolina right here in the capital city. I think there's been a little bit of a rivalry between Texas A&M and the Gamecocks, but unfortunately the Aggies have dominated that series. But yeah, I'm the luckiest guy in the world, Allan. I got to do what I love doing. I started flying when I was in high school and got my private pilot certificate before I finished high school, and then I just went straight to the university and started studying there. Didn't study very long, but continued my flying all through college. But I was also interested in accident investigation. I found the government documents library to be incredibly interesting. I would go there and read NTSB accident reports. So I thought one day I want to work for the NTSB , I wanna be one of the board members that gets to sign these final reports. So I got to be an airline pilot, did that for 24 years, and then I got to be on the NTSB for 15 years. So I consider myself to be truly one of the luckiest guys in the world to be able to live a couple of different dreams.
• 3:01
  Allan Rutter: It's really remarkable. My younger brother is that kind of person who was doing things in his high school days that he eventually, that's what he did for a living. He was an artist and was really interested in advertising and after getting his degree off, he went to Madison Avenue and that's what he ended up doing. My journey was a lot more circuitous, but that's really an impressive story. Now let's talk a little bit about the NTSB. Accident investigation has been something that the federal government has done pretty much since the advent of aviation, but the NTSB itself was created in 1967 with the creation of the Department of Transportation and the Johnson Administration. Tell our listeners a little more about how the NTSB is organized and how does it go about doing its work, investigating transportation events and then making safety recommendations to prevent similar incidents in the future.
• 3:57
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, I'll tell you , I was always so proud to be a part of the NTSB . In 1974, it became an independent federal agency, so no longer affiliated with the DOT , and we can talk about the pros and cons of that. But as an agency of about 430 staff so far, they are surviving government cutbacks because, you know, I think the administration realizes how essential it is to have a strong NTSB . The NTSB is an independent agency charged by Congress to investigate transportation accidents, to make safety recommendations, to improve safety, to make sure those accidents don't happen again. And it's not just an aviation organization. Yes, it does investigate aviation accidents, but it also--as you know from your background, Allan--they investigate selected rail accidents, selected pipeline accidents, highway accidents, and also maritime accidents. So it's got a broad mission there and it does, it has a very good reputation. So it was great to be a part of that organization .
• 5:09
  Allan Rutter: So how does the agency, when do they choose to roll out on an incident? Is there a sort of protocol or algorithm of this is the kind of thing that we would go do? Is that a matter of the leadership of the board? How do you choose to launch an investigation?
• 5:26
  Robert Sumwalt: Great question. When it comes to aviation, there are no decisions to be made because the statute states that the NTSB shall investigate all civil aviation accidents that occur in this country. So that's easy, but it gets a little more discretion when it comes to investigating other modes of transportation. Unfortunately, as you know, we have highway crashes, roadway crashes in this country every day . So the NTSB does not go to every one of those, but they're going to look at the factors, circumstances, conditions surrounding those crashes and say, you know, this involved a school bus or this involved an electric vehicle where the battery continued to relight, so they're going to look at it on a case-by-case basis and then decide how to respond if they will at all, to some of those other accidents and other modes of transportation.
• 6:21
  Allan Rutter: I think a good illustration of that is a couple of years ago here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. During an ice storm, there was a particularly high-profile, high-consequence crash within a managed lanes that became the subject of an NTSB investigation and report.
• 6:39
  Robert Sumwalt: Yes, and I left the NTSB before that investigation was completed, but I certainly followed it as it was going on.
• 6:46
  Allan Rutter: So on average, about how long does it take to complete an investigation and consider the adoption of a final report?
• 6:54
  Robert Sumwalt: You know, it used to be, we could say about 12 months. There's been some mission creep in there, and so now it's about 12 to 18 months. When I was chairman, we really looked at how we could get these reports done more quickly and not sacrifice quality, and that's a real balancing act there. So I would , I'd rather take a little bit longer to complete a report and not sacrifice quality. So it's a hard balance there, but the NTSB is known for being very deliberate, being very precise. And so , it does take a while. But as we saw earlier this week, in the case of the midair collision in in Washington D. C . , the NTSB can come out with a preliminary report, but also issue urgent safety recommendations. The investigation on the midair is only less than two months old, but yet the board has already identified safety issues that warrant immediate attention
• 7:54
  Allan Rutter: And have resulted in immediate response from the newly confirmed transportation secretary.
• 8:01
  Robert Sumwalt: You're right, and here's a case where the NTSB had a press conference at two o'clock. It wrapped up by about 2:20, 2:30; they issued these urgent safety recommendations, and at four o'clock the Secretary of Transportation held a press conference and he accepted those urgent safety recommendations. He says, yes, we are going to do that. So I've never seen recommendations implemented or agreed to be implemented that quickly.
• 8:31
  Allan Rutter: And we'll talk about some of the particular features of that January crash in Reagan National. There's something special not only about the consequence of that incident, but the place that happened as a non-aviation person; I'm a trained guy, but it strikes me that one of the reasons why that has such importance--one, it's the highest consequence aviation crash in a long time; and the fact is that Reagan National is where most of the members of Congress fly in and out of. Am I overstating that?
• 9:02
  Robert Sumwalt: No, I don't think so at all. I think that we are a victim of our own success and I'm happy for that. Before the midair on January the 29th, the last fatal crash involving a U. S. scheduled major airline was back in 2009. And so we had gone 16 years without a major crash. And so once one happened, I think people almost forgot that these things can happen. And so I think it was the fact that we haven't seen one in a long time. I especially think since it happened right there going into Washington, D.C., the nation's capital . Another thing we didn't have 20 years ago was everybody's got a cell phone, ring doorbell camera, all of these things, security cameras. So we actually saw this midair collision happen based on video that was there. So I think these things are making these events more spectacular, yes. I don't mean to understate the importance of the loss of 67 lives, but the fact that you can actually see it made it even more spectacular.
• 10:17
  Allan Rutter: Yeah, I think that's one of the things that distinguished the rail derailment in East Palestine a couple of years ago, is the ubiquity of everybody's cell phones . There were major derailments that happened when I was FRA administrator in the previous geological age, but there were no cell phone cameras. And so if nobody was there to take pictures of us , it was almost as if it didn't happen. But clearly the advent of that immediate communication also means that everybody has an immediate hot take about it. That gets back to what you were talking about of the deliberation that the NTSB goes about its work in. Maybe talk a little more about why the ability to take that time results in better outcomes.
• 11:03
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, the rush to judgment is not always the accurate judgment. And so yes, we know what happened. I mean, the fact is, is that two aircraft came together over the Potomac River. The real question is why did that happen? And digging down into the why to do it right , it does take time and the NTSB has to be insulated from these external pressures and they can generally do a very good job of just doing what they need to do, going about it very scientifically and very methodically.
• 11:38
  Allan Rutter: One of the things that you just described is this is the first time it's happened in a long time, but once these kinds of things happen, it's almost like when you're thinking about buying a car, you suddenly see that car everywhere on the road. After the January event, there were a couple other incidents that weren't fatal, but they started being more visible with more frequency. What are you telling people about the sort of overall state of commercial aviation safety?
• 12:07
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, in fact, I'm supposed to do that very thing tonight on CBS Evening News, so I'll need to put on a little more makeup before I do that. But the fact of the matter is, is that we are having a lot of these things that are getting on TV that are certainly , uh, reported on social media. Just yesterday, there was something that happened in Denver with an engine on fire. And so that was on this morning's news. There's a lot of things going on right now and people's emotional brain is telling them flying may not be very safe; but if they use their intellectual brain, they'll realize that 45,000 flights operate safely each day. I've seen a statistic that you could board an airplane at random every day for the next 100,000 years before statistically speaking, you would be killed in an airplane crash. And so , I've gotta get on an airplane tomorrow. I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane every day for the next hundred-thousand years . But you know, I think when you really think about it, those kinds of statistics put it in perspective that the chance of being killed in a major airline crash these days is extremely low , and the system generally works very well. So I understand the anxiety that people have. I do understand that, but buy that ticket, get out there and fly and have a good time where you're going and be safe.
• 13:43
  Allan Rutter: Well, and I think it goes back to something you described about the distinction between these are events that happen on the news. There are 40,000 fatalities, fatalities, on the nation's roadways, and because they happen with such frequency and relatively, I mean it , it makes a real impact on the families involved, but it happens one or two at a time. So that intellectual story we tell ourselves, we don't seem to have much concern about getting behind the wheel and heading off on a multi-lane freeway at highway speeds, even though statistically that's a lot more dangerous than getting on an airplane.
• 14:25
  Robert Sumwalt: No, I agree with you. And frankly, we should have social outrage that we are killing as many people on our nation's roadways as we do, especially due to factors such as impaired driving, where we lose between 10[000] and 15,000 people each year due to impaired driving alcohol impaired drug impaired. So we really ought to have social outrage on that.
• 14:49
  Allan Rutter: So one of the reasons why aviation is as safe as it is, is that there's an aviation safety culture that starts with how aircraft are built, how they're maintained, how they're operated, the relationship between the FAA in its regulatory structure and the FAA as the operator of the aviation system from an air traffic control standpoint, the airlines themselves, and then labor organizations at every one of those levels, whether it's pilots, mechanics, the people who are building the aircraft. As somebody from other modes of transportation looks at that safety culture, it seems to be a lot more structured, a lot more balanced, and frankly a lot less about gotcha moments and more about collectively owning safety than it does in certain other industries. Talk a little bit about all of the people involved in making sure that commercial aviation operates safely.
• 15:51
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, there are a lot of organizations that are out there to make sure that our aviation system is safe as it is. One of the things that has occurred over the last few years is the voluntary reporting, the voluntary safety programs. It used to be that if you, you would never wanna report a safety problem because if you did, then you're going to get your hand slapped; that if you said, "Hey, I screwed up, I made this mistake." Now fortunately, somebody caught it before it became problematic, but nowadays the FAA really encourages this voluntary reporting and if you do report something, they're not going to punish you over it because they've realized--and not only the FAA , the regulatory authority, but the airlines are realizing this as well. They'd rather learn where these problems are and head them off before they cause accidents than worry about punishing somebody. And I believe that's one of the reasons that our system is as safe as it is in aviation.
• 16:57
  Allan Rutter: Well, as much work as you've done in human factors safety, one of the things that distinguishes how the cockpit works that's different from almost any other place where a vehicle is operated is the fact that the pilot and copilot and people that are in that cockpit are both looking out for each other and holding each other accountable. But it's done in a less accusatory and more supportive kind of way. That's gotta be based on some research, right?
• 17:28
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, yeah, and I started flying for an airline in 1981. I was just a youngster then, but I have a picture of me standing or sitting at the flight engineer's panel where I started as a flight engineer on a Boeing 727. And in the background you can see that somebody had placed a crutch tip, a rubber crutch tip over the cockpit microphone. So in other words, the captain did not want people quote /unquote "spying on" what we were saying. So that was 1981. You fast forward to now, 2025, and now airlines routinely in a de-identified fashion, they not only share data with each other but with the FAA as well. And I think that's how far we've come with... In one case, somebody doesn't want somebody spying on them to where now we were openly airing our dirty laundry and again, in a de-identified non-punitive sort of manner so we can see where the system problems are so we can correct those before we have major problems.
• 18:40
  Allan Rutter: That's certainly one of the things that we're seeing from a regulatory standpoint. In other modes, cab-facing cameras on the motor carriers or for locomotive crew members, I think the natural tendency not to want have people look over your shoulder, frankly must be a little curious for people who work in call centers whose every utterance is coached, is looked at and criticized. So it's one of those things where the rest of the world is probably saying, welcome to our party, pal .
• 19:13
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, that's right. If you work at a seven 11 , you probably have a camera pointed at the cash register too. So you're right.
• 19:20
  Allan Rutter: One of the things that that multimodal comparison... As a former person who was in an agency that had rulemaking authority, I found myself being invited to testify in Congress and sit next to NTSB board members. One of the things that's sort of different and unique about that sort of experience is, the NTSB for a long time it said, "Gee, having a positive train control technology system could solve an awful lot of rail accidents that have high consequence." And as a regulator, I would have to stand there or sit there and say, well, one of the things that Congress had given me, the constraint on making rules, is to respond through the Administrative Procedure Act, which meant that there was a benefit-cost ratio thing. Congress created those modal administrations with rulemaking and regulatory responsibility in the NTSB with different but complimentary roles. And so on the one hand, NTSB can make recommendations that don't have anything to do with benefit-cost, but that's your job. And the regulatory agencies can't tell regulated industries "this is something you're gonna do" unless there's that benefit cost thing. Talk about the sort of balance between the recommendations and the people who those recommendations are given to.
• 20:45
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, and you raise a great point there. The NTSB does not have to consider feasibility or cost when they issue a safety recommendation. Now, granted, we wanted to make sure that we are issuing something that can be done, but sometimes these are going to be stretch goals. I mean, you look at the implementation of positive train control. Yeah, it was a great idea. In 1990, when the NTSB first established a most wanted list, they called for something that looked like positive train control, great idea. But yet the technology was not mature enough for PTC to be implemented until a couple of decades later. You know, the NTSB should be very pure and they should say, this is what happened and this is what we think would keep it from happening again. And then they issue these safety recommendations to the regulatory authority or to to a company, to an organization. And it's up to the recommendation recipient to figure out how to do it. Not all of NTSB's recommendations can be done in a cost-beneficial manner, and fortunately as a citizen, we don't want an over burdensome government telling us what we have to do and what we can't do. So that's where the Administrative Procedure Act comes into effect. It says, "Hey, we wanna make sure there's a very deliberate process for implementing recommendations before we impose laws." And so there's executive orders that say that each new law has to have a cost-benefit analysis. So that makes sure that the benefits of something from a financial point of view do outweigh the costs.
• 22:31
  Allan Rutter: I think one of the interesting things when you mentioned earlier in our conversation about how the secretary of transportation responded in the January D. C. qir crash, immediately the reason why there was positive train control was not because the FRA determined that was something they should do. It was because there was a huge, high-consequence commuter rail crash in California in 2008 that killed 25 people. And Congress within months took action and said, there will be PTC, we're gonna take that away from you FA kids. This is something that's gonna happen. So, there are both limits to the, sort of, administrative process. And then there are times when Congress will just step in and say, "Yeah whatever, this is gonna happen."
• 23:15
  Robert Sumwalt: That's a good point. And yet, Congress may have gotten a little ahead of their skis on that too because the PTC deadline had to keep rolling back because--
• 23:25
  Allan Rutter: It took a while .
• 23:27
  Robert Sumwalt: Yeah, the technology just wasn't there. You can't snap your fingers and say you're gonna put up 25,000 antennas across the rail system and make it happen. But it did happen. And we're sorry for all of the casualties that have occurred in order to require that mandate , but now we have it in place.
• 23:48
  Allan Rutter: Well, and one of the things we've now learned as a result of that being put in place is the railroads themselves are gaining some productivity benefits from having the technology in place as much as they kvetch about doing it. And I think that there are now data collection that PTC makes possible that allows us to learn a lot more about other safety and community interests, like blocked crossings and and other things that PTC makes it possible to get that kind of data from.
• 24:16
  Robert Sumwalt: Exactly.
• 24:18
  Allan Rutter: Tell me a little bit about your work at Embry -Riddle and the Boeing Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety. What is that and what do you guys do?
• 24:27
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, thanks a lot. Embry-Riddle, it's an aeronautical university. They'll celebrate their centennial next year. It's got about 32,000 students between the residential campuses at Daytona Beach and Prescott, Arizona, and then a worldwide campus with about 22,000 people mostly on the Internet. I got my master's through Embry-Riddle. When I retired--I failed retirement. Allan, I think probably like you--I left the NTSB on my 65th birthday and the president of Embry-Riddle invited me to come to Embry-Riddle and talk to him about starting a Center of Excellence for Aviation Safety. And before he could even finish his sentence, I said, yes, I'd like to do that. So I've been there for three years. We are building a center of excellence from scratch. Boeing came and liked what we were doing and they made a nice donation. So we named the center. They are our beneficiary. We're the Boeing Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety. We're part of Embry-Riddle, but we do conduct impactful safety research. We support our academic programs. We offer continuing education or professional education courses for industry professionals who want to come and take courses on accident investigation or emergency response and planning or safety management systems, human factors, whatever it is. They can come and take a five-day course a three-day course from us, whatever it is. I was in Jakarta, Indonesia, last month teaching a course on safety management systems for Boeing. And then the last thing we do is industry engagement. So, I consider the opportunity to speak with you right now, one of those industry engagement sort of things where we can go out and we can speak to industry, we can support the industry and their safety initiatives.
• 26:14
  Allan Rutter: So it sounds a little like what the Boeing Center does in conjunction with Embry-Riddle is sort of similar to what TTI does in conjunction with the A&M University System. We are sort of a practical extension of a land-grant university as part of the work that they do. In the same way the county extension agents and and other kinds of things get done. We're a practical element of the underpinning from our civil engineering folks at the various universities in passing there. You mentioned something that I think is pretty important and I don't wanna let go of it. You mentioned safety management systems. One of the things that looked to be an interesting outcropping of the last administration was the expansion of safety management systems as a discipline for thinking about safety in other modes, particularly on the highway side. Could you talk a little bit about what safety management systems are and what kind of a benefit they could have in other modes of transportation?
• 27:16
  Robert Sumwalt: Yeah. It's been a buzzword in the aviation industry now for about two-and-a-half decades. And now it's mandated for various sectors of aviation. But basically SMS provides a structure for a business approach to managing safety. Now people think, oh, managing safety. You know, just tell people, "be more careful." You know, that doesn't really work. But safety management systems give people an actual structure that they can follow to ensure that they are assessing level of risk and deciding whether or not that level of risk is acceptable. And if not, how to mitigate that risk. It talks about how to promote safety. It talks about how to have safety assurance to make sure that your risk controls are actually accomplishing what they're intended to do. So that's really what I look as safety management systems is, is a business approach to managing safety.
• 28:16
  Allan Rutter: One of the things that we've seen our sponsors at the Texas Department of Transportation--one of the things they've done as an internal safety measure--'cause they've got lots and lots of people who are on the road all the time and they've inculcated a different sort of approach on ... before you get in the car, you're gonna do a walk around and make sure that your car's okay, you're gonna back into parking spaces so that you can get out safer so that you can see where you're going. It's a comprehensive approach about operating a vehicle that it's not just about turning the key, it's about making sure that you've got an environment in which you're gonna be safe while you're doing the part of your job that involves being in a vehicle.
• 29:00
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, and let me ask you this. Generally speaking, do those measures work?
• 29:06
  Allan Rutter: Probably so. I think they're seeing real benefits from it, yeah.
• 29:08
  Robert Sumwalt: Yeah. And so yeah, you can do certain things to actually improve your safety performance. And so now with safety management systems, it's required for all airlines in the U. S. [to] have to have in place an FAA -accepted SMS. Now , charter operators will have to as well as aircraft manufacturers and engine manufacturers, they will have to have this moving forward.
• 29:35
  Allan Rutter: I was part of a National Academies panel that did a study that the Congress required on the impacts of long train operations. And one of the things we noted was, the FRA had put in some new regulations requiring more of a risk-based safety approach on the railroads and how the decisions on how and when to have longer train operations needed to be made in a sort of comprehensive safety management approach. Think about the risks and how you're gonna mitigate those risks. Sounds like that, slowly but surely, other modes are adopting what has been proven as a proven approach at the aviation world .
• 30:19
  Robert Sumwalt: Yeah. You know, and I think generally when we start living our lives that way, we can improve safety. I mean risk management, you know, it sounds complicated, but I've seen a good definition that came out of the FAA that says that we manage risk whenever we modify the way that we do something to increase the chances of success or decrease the chances of injury, failure, or loss. And I like that definition because I think, if we're going to to live very long, we actually do that in our normal lives. And we may not realize it, but... I know that coming out of my neighborhood, there's two exits I can go out of one way that might be a little bit quicker, shorter, but to exit you have to leave from a blind curve and a car could be zipping around that curve and you'd get hit. So I think for us who practice risk management, we elect to go out of the other exit because you don't have that blind exit when you leave.
• 31:12
  Allan Rutter: That is a great definition. I'm gonna have to, we'll get the transcript and I'll put that on some bumper stickers. Talking about the other things that the aviation industry can inform others... In the state of Texas over the last couple years, commercial space operations have become much of a bigger thing, both in West Texas and in South Texas, down in Brownsville on the coast, there's a lot more commercial space activity. The state of Texas has invested in some more institutes about that. It's part of the state's economic development opportunities. What is it that as space operations move from a governmental thing that's done with relative infrequency to something that's a commercial operation with more frequency, what can that operation learn from what aviation has demonstrated as part of their safety culture?
• 32:07
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, it's a great question . You know, certainly when space was being conducted by NASA... NASA is a wonderful agency. In fact, they continuously rank at the top of the best places to work in the federal government. I've got a lot of respect for NASA, but generally the private sector can do things a little bit better and more efficiently than can the government. So as we've seen a lot of successful commercial space launches over the past few years, I think they're going to continue to do a good job. But it is important not to see how fast you can go, but to make sure that you're doing it while you are managing those risks to an acceptable level. And I don't want there to be... you know, we used to hear about the Space Race. Well, we don't want there to be a race that we a re actually sacrificing s afety by racing to see how many rockets we can put in the air.
• 33:02
  Allan Rutter: I think anybody who's an aficionado or fan of either NASCAR or Formula One, there's more than frequent crashes that happen there. But we'd rather not see that in commercial space activity.
• 33:13
  Robert Sumwalt: Exactly.
• 33:15
  Allan Rutter: So to close out, as we mentioned earlier, you're demonstrating on a sort of monthly basis the ubiquity of commercial aviation by the fact that it connects the entire world and you're on some of those really long distance flights on a regular basis. I can't imagine that you'd be doing it if it wasn't a passion of yours. Tell our listeners a little more about why you're eager to show up to work every day ... why you agreed to "unretire." What is it that keeps you going?
• 33:45
  Robert Sumwalt: Well, thank you. It really is a passion. You know, we are trying to make the world a better place. Our work is meaningful. And most importantly, Allan, I think that our work, if we do it right, it saves lives.
• 33:59
  Allan Rutter: That's a powerful motivator. And to be able to say that, that's the kind of thing that you were able to do. I think it's one of the reasons why it's been something that I've helped folks that I've come in contact about transportation as a whole is it's the kind of thing where once you do something, you can see the result of it. There's a facility, there's a road, there's something there that you say, "I did that." We built that together.
• 34:24
  Robert Sumwalt: I think you hit on something very important right there. We did it together. Nobody does any of this by themselves. It's all teamwork . For the NTSB , we could sit there and hammer our fist and point fingers, but it took the regulatory authorities or the recommendation recipients to actually do what we called for. So it really is a team effort, and together we are making our transportation system more safe .
• 34:51
  Allan Rutter: More safe . Well, that's certainly something to celebrate and as we also celebrate the fact that you were able to spend some time with us today. Robert, thanks so much for joining us on our podcast.
• 35:01
  Robert Sumwalt: It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you. And again, everybody be safe.
• 35:07
  Allan Rutter: After Robert mentioned the number of yearly highway fatalities compared to aviation incidents, I checked the numbers. In 2023, almost 41,000 people died across the nation. In highway crashes in Texas, almost 4,300. When I think about the holistic approach to aviation safety, Robert discussed, I feel convicted to approach my own driving with more purposeful attention to safety. I can leave my phone alone when my little pickup is moving. I can add some time to my longer trips to finish eating before I get back in the car. And rather than getting angry at aggressive drivers, I can choose to give them a wide berth and stay focused on my own driving. Just as many parties cooperate to make air travel safe, we too can cooperate to make our roadways a safer place to drive. Thanks for listening. If you liked what you heard or learned something, please take just a minute to give us a review, subscribe, and share this episode. I invite you to join us next time for another conversation about getting ourselves in the stuff we need from point A to point B. Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of The Texas A&M University System. The show is edited and produced by Chris Pourteau. I'm your host, Allan Rutter. Thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next time .