Just as transportation via air, sea or rail carries the potential of both catastrophe and total destruction, so does transportation via petrochemical pipeline.
To say that a mode of transportation carries the potential of a catastrophe implies that a huge number of deaths and injuries and huge material destruction can happen when these accidents occur in high-workload, high-speed transportation systems.
Saying that it carries the potential of total destruction means that it will be very difficult to survive such accidents in such a system.
When an accident occurs, that means that the method for monitoring the safety of the transportation system has failed, and legally speaking, such a failure will involve both civil and criminal liability as well as the issue of administrative responsibility.
Investigations by the judicial authorities are aimed at determining an offender’s actions in order to be able to ascertain criminal liability or protect the just and fair allocation between the perpetrator and the victim of liability for damages under civil law.
Such investigations are also intended to be used as a basis for administrative punishment for any violation of administrative regulations.
When it comes to the issue of transportation accidents, in addition to investigating whether an accident was caused by human error, there are also accidents that are not caused by human error as well as accidents that are caused by technical, operational and management shortcomings.
The targets of investigation also include the administrative agencies charged with safety supervision and management and they also involve conflicts of interest.
This is why there are independent parallel mechanisms for the investigation of safety systems, which is different from a judicial investigation or a traditional administrative investigation.
In 1998, following a series of air crashes, Taiwan decided to emulate advanced countries by setting up the Aviation Safety Council — which is charged with investigating flight incidents — and building a legal framework for flight safety investigations in order to improve the safety of air transportation.
The difference being that, in addition to investigating aviation accidents, the responsibilities of authorities charged with air transportation safety investigations in advanced countries also include sea, rail — including standard railways, high-speed railways and subways — and petrochemical pipeline transportation, all of which carry the potential of causing catastrophe and wreaking destruction.
More than 72 hours have now passed since apparent gas leakages from petrochemical pipelines in Greater Kaohsiung resulted in explosions on Thursday night last week, however, the exact explanations for the explosions, including who is responsible, are still unknown.
How, then, does the nation ensure the prevention of a similar disaster from occurring again?
It is clear that one of the government’s most urgent tasks is to establish a legal framework regulating safety investigations that integrates petrochemical pipelines, sea, air and rail transportation in order to satisfy public expectations that the government protect and maintain social safety and normal economic activities.
Jao Juei-cheng is an associate professor at National Taiwan Ocean University’s Institute of the Law of the Sea and secretary-general of the Taiwan Maritime Law Association.
Translated by Perry Svensson
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