Locomotive Event Recorders

FRA is issuing revisions to the regulations governing locomotive event recorders to improve the crashworthiness of railroad locomotive event recorders and to enhance the quality of information available for post-accident investigations. FRA is amending its existing regulations in four major ways: By requiring that a new locomotive have an event recorder with a "hardened" memory module, proven by a requirement that the memory module preserve stored data throughout a sequence of prescribed tests; by requiring that this event recorder on a new locomotive collect certain additional types of information; by simplifying standards for inspecting, testing, and maintaining all event recorders; and by requiring the phasing out, over a four-year period, of event recorders on existing locomotives that use magnetic tape as a data storage medium and their replacement with event recorders with a certified survivable version of its previous event recorder. FRA is also revising the definitions contained in the existing regulation to remove the letter designations so that the defined terms are simply presented in alphabetical order.