Transportation of Hazardous Materials: Issues in Law, Social Science, and Engineering

Leon N. Moses In June 1991, the Transportation Center at Northwestern University sponsored Hazmat Transport '91: A National Conference on the Transportation of Hazardous Materials and Wastes. The faculty associated with the center were aware that there had been many professional, industrial and government conferences and meetings on the subject. However, they believed that the unique capacity of the Transportation Center to bring together leaders from industry and government, as well as leading scholars from economics, law, engineering, psychology and sociology who have done research on the problems associated with the transportation of hazardous materials and wastes (hazmats), could produce a set of integrated insights and understandings that would go well beyond those of previous conferences. The papers that make up this volume were all delivered at Hazmat Transport '91. From a legislative point of view, they tend to deal with issues associated with the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act of 1975 (HMTA), the original act passed to regulate the transportation of hazardous materials, and the Hazardous Materials Transportation Uniform Safety Act of 1990 (HMTVSA). There were talks and papers presented at the conference that focused on other recent legislation and transportation issues with which HMTUSA does not deal. The conference proceedings volume also had discussions and papers on significant managerial and regulatory issues that could not be included in this volume because of constraints on its size. Therefore, this essay is made up of three parts.