Joint Committee on Aviation Pathology: VIII. Medical investigator preparedness for aircraft accident investigation.
The statutory authority and responsibility of the National Transportation Safety Board in the investigation and determination of the probable cause of aviation accidents is described. The Independent Safety Board Act of 1974 acknowledges the importance of obtaining data regarding trauma sustained in an accident by survivors, as well as those persons injured fatally. Information regarding occupant injuries, coupled with extensive examination of the aircraft wreckage, is necessary in order to identify hazards which inflicted the injuries. The human factors investigator is responsible for reporting the facts, conditions, and circumstances relating to first, the accident causation and, second, the injury causation. These two areas, of necessity, rely quite heavily upon the postmortem examination and laboratory analyses of the cras victims. The Safety Board's investigation must determine if a crewmember suffered from a preexisting disease, whether the crew had ingested drugs contraindicated with their flying duties, as well as a description of all injuries and all toxicological and histological findings for crew and passengers. During Safety Board investigations conducted in densely populated cites, over oceans, and in remote areas, both in the United States and overseas, many situations have developed which have caused musch investigative effort due to less than complete postmortem examinations. These situations, in most instances, could have been averted by advance planning by local authorities.