By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden plans to nominate the former mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, to serve on the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the independent federal agency charged with investigating all civil aviation accidents and many other transportation mishaps, a White House official told Reuters.
Alvin Brown, who was the first-ever African American elected mayor of Jacksonville, served as executive director of the White House Community Empowerment Board under then President Bill Clinton, is being tapped to fill a seat on the five-member NTSB, which currently has one vacancy.
The board investigates significant accidents in other modes of transportation – highway, marine, pipeline and railroad – and determines the probable cause of accidents and makes safety recommendations.
The board in recent years has investigated a number of crashes involving Tesla Inc’s advanced driver assistance system, Autopilot. In June the board sent letters to the governors of all 50 states https://www.ntsb.gov/Advocacy/mwl/Documents/Impairment-SR-Letters.pdf urging them to take steps to try to reduce alcohol- and drug-related traffic fatalities. About one-third, or around 10,000 traffic deaths annually, are alcohol-related.
(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)