NTSB urges ban on riding shoving movements

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wants railroad employees to stop riding on pushed railcars to watch the track ahead of the movement. The NTSB analysed sixteen accidents involving this practice between October 2020 and December 2025 (thirteen completed and three ongoing investigations), in which fourteen employees died and two were seriously injured.

What Happened

In a so-called shoving movement, a locomotive pushes railcars from behind, leaving the engineer with no view of the track ahead of the cars. To compensate, an employee must provide “point protection”: visually confirming that the track is clear and directing the movement. This is done in part by riding on the leading car. Of the 20 conductor (train crew and switching employee) fatalities reported to the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) between January 2020 and July 2025, the NTSB found that 14 involved conductors riding during a shoving movement.

One example is the accident on August 5, 2025, at Globeville Yard in Denver, Colorado, United States, where a BNSF Railway train performed a shoving movement over a misaligned switch. The train struck standing equipment; three standing cars and five of the train’s own cars derailed. The conductor riding the leading car was thrown from the equipment and seriously injured when the car rolled over him.

Conclusions

The NTSB concludes that riding during shoving movements is used throughout the industry without justification, given the risk of injury and death and the alternatives available. Federal rules that prohibit unrelated tasks during shoves do not adequately protect employees when those tasks conflict with routine duties such as training, as shown by two incidents involving trainees. Job briefing rules also do not require specific hazards—such as limited clearance, restricted visibility, or a misaligned switch—to be identified, leaving employees inadequately prepared for them. Industry rules further leave it to individual employees to judge whether riding is safe, necessary, or permitted. As a result, employees are exposed to undocumented, temporarily tight clearances, unfamiliar yards, hard-to-detect hazards, and unintended deviations caused by derails or misaligned switches. Federal point protection rules do require an employee to be “properly positioned,” but do not specify the safest position during the movement itself.

Recommendations

Based on these findings, the NTSB issued seven new recommendations (R-26-12 through R-26-18). To the FRA: prohibit railroads from having employees provide point protection by riding (R-26-12), require a location-specific hazard analysis that is periodically reviewed and shared with employees (R-26-13), and require pre-shove briefings covering task-specific hazards and that analysis (R-26-14). Similar recommendations go to all Class I railroads: a ban on riding (R-26-15), their own hazard analysis (R-26-16), and mandatory pre-shove briefings (R-26-17). The industry association ASLRRA must inform its members of the report and the risks of riding (R-26-18). Two earlier recommendations on ground protection during shoves across highway-rail grade crossings, to the FRA (R-23-19) and to rulebook holders and railroads (R-23-20), have been classified as “Closed—Superseded”: the NTSB states that R-26-12 makes separate crossing rules unnecessary.

Context

An FRA analysis of switching operations training needs (July 2026) aligns with the NTSB’s report. According to the FRA, the majority of all U.S. railroad incidents from 2016 through mid-May 2024 had a human cause; 59% of those incidents were related to switching rules or operations. The number of fatalities in switching work has declined over the years, according to data from the Switching Operations Fatality Analysis (SOFA) Working Group, but the share involving shoving movements has increased; between 2011 and 2021, the majority of fatal switching accidents involved shoving movements.

Although this investigation concerns the U.S. railroad industry, the underlying issue is not uniquely American: wherever switching takes place, visibility and communication must be assured during movements where the engineer cannot see the track ahead. For HSE professionals worldwide, this report illustrates how an informal, judgment-based practice can persist for years despite repeated fatal outcomes, and underscores the value of documented site hazard analyses and hazard-specific briefings as structural safeguards—not only in rail switching, but in any operation where employees work between or on moving equipment.

Source: NTSB Railroad Investigation Report RIR-26-15, September 17, 2026

Additional research: Federal Railroad Administration, “Findings from a Preliminary Review of Switching Operations Training Needs” (RR 26-05), July 2026