As I noted in my posting in the Mass Transit forum regarding last night's Amtrak crash, lately the NTSB has been posting a number of older accident investigation reports on their web site. They can be accessed at http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AccidentReports.aspx Reports can be sorted by mode of transportation, report number, and state. They are in pdf format and are downloadable if you choose to do so.
Perusing through some of these reports, I've gained some interesting insights and a better understanding of the casual factors that led to some of these events, particularly those events that happened when I was too young to appreciate some of the nuances involved. As an example, while I always knew about the Caldecott Tunnel fire, I never fully understood the exact chain of events leading up to the fire until I was able to read the NTSB report.
The NTSB has publically stated that they will be releasing more of these older reports over time. I for one fully support this effort.
Me too!
I have been reading them for a while now, mostly the aviation accidents. About a year or so ago I started looking at the Highway and Rail accident reports as well and many of them are certainly eye opening.
People also need to check out the other links under the Investigations tab, especially the Docket Management System. There are a lot of pictures, original reports (like police accident reports) other scanned in documents, interview transcripts (etc) in the system that may or may not have been turned into a completed report in the Accident Report section.