Being truthful and committed to good intentions and promises-made plants the right seed for new accomplishments, positive achievements not heretofore realized, attracting the support of others and, even, establishing protections for one’s self as well as one’s best interests.

Too bad Norfolk Southern Railroad has chosen to deviate from full support of such a strategy and, instead, has opted to take a step backward, as a recent Associated Press article revealed.

The article reported uneasiness triggered by the railroad’s order directing that its inspectors spend no more than a minute checking an individual railcar for flaws or problems much worse.

What is problematic for railroad communities, both in our state and places west and east through which NS trains travel is that the railroad last year said that, because of safety concerns, it would back away from rushing inspections.

The new directive about minute-long inspections, however, seems to reverse that publicly stated stance, despite the reality Norfolk still is enduring regarding its East Palestine, Ohio, derailment of February 2023, near Ohio’s border with Pennsylvania, in which hazardous chemicals spilled and caught fire.

The fears ignited by that accident continue to exist in and around East Palestine today, even filtering well into this state, including here.

Norfolk Southern’s reputation has taken a major hit as a result of the Ohio derailment, and the company is playing a dangerous game on the reputation front as a result of the new inspection decision, which came about not long after Mark George was promoted to be the railroad’s new CEO.

Some people might be inclined to suggest that Norfolk Southern’s new inspection rule will have the railroad playing a form of Russian roulette with the trains carrying valuable cargoes and oftentimes dangerous cargoes.

Whereas the traditional game Russian roulette is played with one bullet in a handgun’s cylinder, Norfolk Southern will be playing a version of that potentially lethal game with virtually hundreds of potentially lethal projectiles — which in this case happen to be railcars.

Those railcars would be capable of exacting a terrible toll of death and destruction if they were turned loose by some tragic happening or series of catastrophic circumstances.

People here who are familiar with today’s freight trains know that those freight “vehicles” often are a mile or two long and that they are not somewhere else across America — they’re oftentimes here.

Those behemoths should not be at the center of bad decision-making based on one-minute inspections resulting from unconscionable time pressures directed at inspectors.

Concerned about this latest Norfolk Southern inspection stance, David Arouca, national legislative director for the Transportation Communications Union, which represents the carmen tasked with inspecting railcars, expressed the following viewpoint:

“You can’t place your eyeballs on 90 points of inspection in 30 seconds (per side) and do that repeatedly for 50-100 cars in a row and not miss things.

“The idea that this is a comprehensive inspection according to the federal regulations is a joke.”

Trouble is, the “joke” is not at all funny, and that message needs to be delivered — and repeated often — loud and clear to Norfolk Southern management at the rail company’s highest levels.