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Human factor to blame for 80 pct of transport disasters

According to the official, "the responsibility of legal entities must be introduced in the first place"

MOSCOW, September 15 (Itar-Tass) —— The human factor is to blame for more than 80 percent of traffic accidents, the deputy head of the federal service for transport supervision, Vladimir Chertok, said in the course of hearings at the Public Chamber, devoted to the preliminary results of investigation into the sinking of the cruise ship Bulgaria.

"Over the past few years the nature of violations has changed,” he said. “As many as 83 percent of accidents are caused by the human factors, but whereas before there were mostly errors by the crew, now there is mostly conscious abuse, such as refusal to land an alternative airfield."

Chertok said in this connection that "something in the law needs to be changed.” He believes "there should be different sanctions for violations, as the ones existing today are negligible, compared with the consequences."

According to the official, "the responsibility of legal entities must be introduced in the first place."

"Now all responsibility for such disasters is borne by the captain," he added.

One of the main problems related to transport, Chertok said, "is a small number of inspectors."

"Right now there are 600 thousand legal entities and only five thousand inspectors,” he said. “Control has become much harder to administer."

Chertok said that "in connection with the crash of the Yak-42 plane the Rostransnadzor watchdog is inspecting all fifteen airlines."

"We are conducting our own investigation," he said.

On September 7 a Yak-42 plane of the Yak-Service airline, carrying the local ice hockey team Lokomotiv to Minsk crashed near Yaroslavl. As a result of the disaster 44 people died. There was only one survivor.