Responding to critical-incident stress

Starting in June, all U.S. Class Is, commuter railroads and Amtrak will have to tell the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) what their plans are to assist employees who experience "critical incident stress" on the job.

A new FRA rule will require the railroads to have plans in place to help employees — such as a train engineer involved in a fatal train-pedestrian accident — recover from stress that may result from the situation.

While many large railroads say they've long had critical incident stress plans, the FRA rule also defines what constitutes a critical incident and outlines who should be covered by the plans and what they include in terms of counseling or other assistance. To learn more about what the rule requires and what railroads are doing to assist employees click the link below.

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