But board member Robert Sumwalt, the only one to speak at the press conference, spent more time telling local media that NTSB still has few answers and it will be a long time before some of their most pressing questions are answered.

Thirty-seven people were thrown into the Delaware River Wednesday afternoon when a barge collided with the amphibious duck boat they were on. Thirty-five people were immediately rescued.

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended the search for the two missing people on Thursday night.

When a television reporter asked Sumwalt what he thought about tourists getting mixed up in an accident involving the industry side of the marine sector, Sumwalt’s only response was “It’s tragic.”

At the time of the collision, the duck boat was at a halt on the river, waiting for assistance after a reported engine fire disabled the engine. A tugboat was pulling the barge.

NTSB is taking the lead on the investigation and questions are being deferred to board member Robert Sumwalt and lead investigator Tom Roth-rothy, who are in Philadelphia supervising the investigation team.

Sumwalt said that NTSB expects to have investigators on the scene for seven to 10 days total, meaning they could depart as early as the end of next week.

Investigators will take all of the data and information collected and bring it back to Washington, D.C., where NTSB is headquartered. It will likely take several months to put all the pieces together and determine everything that went wrong Wednesday afternoon.

While on the scene, investigators will be gathering all kinds of information and data on the actual boats involved, their operating procedures, their crew members and their emergency preparedness and response. That will come form actual inspections of the boats, records and equipment and extensive interviews with passengers, crew and first responders and rescuers.

For local coverage of the accident, you can check out the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia Inquirer at www.philly.com. Thursday’s main story on the accident focuses on confusion about why the tug boat was unaware of the duck boat’s presence.

Keep checking back for more updates and some photos of the accident site. Contact reporter Ariel Zirulnick at ariel.zirulnick@news21.com if you have any leads.

Thirty-five of the 37 people on board were rescued. Two are still unaccounted for. The Duck boat is at the bottom of the Delaware River.

The Duck boat was stopped in the shipping channel because of an engine fire that prompted the crew to cease operations, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. They were waiting for a rescue boat to come get them.

The National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into the accident. Board member Robert Sumwalt will be on the scene, holding regular press conferences.

Keep checking back on the blog for more information as it becomes available and follow reporter Ariel Zirulnick on Twitter at @ariel_news21. If you know anything about this accident or know people who were involved, please contact her at ariel.zirulnick@news21.com.

But it wasn’t always that way. Before a 2003 accident on the Andrew J. Barberi ferry that left 11 dead and 70 injured, the Staten Island ferry’s operations and safety practices left much to be desired, said some regular commuters.

Since that accident, when the person piloting the boat passed out and allowed the boat to ram a maintenance pier on Staten Island, many improvements have been made.

Today there are more crew making rounds on the boat, loudspeaker announcements are regular and clear and inspection officials regularly make appearances, said Tami Kelly, a Staten Island resident who has used the ferry to commute to her job in Manhattan for 15 years.

Without that accident, many unsafe practices, such as a lack of barriers preventing people from falling overboard or an allowance of smoking onboard, might never have changed, said Norman Serafin, a Staten Island resident who has been riding the ferry to work since 1983.

Although the accident highlighted many safety failings in the system, it didn’t cause Staten Islanders to have second thoughts about using one of their most important modes of transportation.

“If you live on Staten Island, this is what you do,” Kelly said. “It’s part of our DNA.”

The 2003 accident spurred the National Transportation Safety Board to make a recommendation that passenger ferries implement a safety management system, which is essentially a checklist of safety and operational items that must be in order for a boat to run safely.

That recommendation was added to the Most Wanted List in February.

Check back later this month for a closer look at what safety management systems could accomplish for the marine industry.

Out on the road, and at truck stops, rumors run rampant that the new system will take a lot of truckers off the road. At a recent Commercial Vehicle Safety Administration (CVSA) Road Check in Flagstaff, Arizona, truckers said they heard “hundreds of thousands” of truckers will be taken off the road because of the new system. Tim Crain, an owner-operator from Roadhouse, Illinois, said he has heard rumors the new system will include measurements for neck size that can result in a mandatory sleep apnea test. “The way I look at it, all that stuff affects me,” Crain said. However, he said there are so many rumors about what the system may or may not include, that “some (rumors) I don’t believe till they’re here.”

At the Great West Truck Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, William Bensmiller, an FMCSA deputy administrator for the state of Nevada, gave talks where he went through the basics of CSA 2010 to a crowd of truckers. Bensmiller said he’s been spending much of the year talking to “anybody impacted” – trucking associations, individual carriers and truckers themselves around the state. He said those that follow the rules will be the least impacted by the new system. “For the good drivers, they’re history will reflect that,” he said.

At the end of June, FMCSA administrator Anne Ferro was part of a panel that testified about CSA 2010 in front of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Joining Ferro on the panel were Steve Keppler of the CVSA, Keith Klein of Transport Corporation of America (which was representing the American Trucking Associations) and Todd Spencer of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

Ferro stated that one of the main goals for the FMCSA is that it must “remove high-risk operators from our roads and highways.” She stated how CSA 2010 will improve the compliance review process, the FMCSA’s main way of inspecting companies that employ commercial drivers, by moving to a more “performance-based approach. ”

Aspects of a new “performance-based approach” were what Klein, representing ATA, took issue with. He brought up statistics of the trucking industry’s “impressive safety record,” including that the “truck-involved fatality rate has decreased 66 percent since 1975.” One of ATA’s main concerns, Klein said, was that the new system will consider “all (Department of Transportation) defined crashes – including those for which the motor carrier could not reasonably be held accountable.” He showed a video to illustrate his point, where a passenger vehicle cut off a truck and crashed into it, causing the truck to break over the median and into oncoming traffic. Under questioning from chairman Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), Ferro said much of the system is still “under review.”

In May 2010, the ferry once again crashed into a pier, this time because the propulsion system stopped working, according to NTSB preliminary investigations.

The 2003 accident spurred a recommendation for a safety checklist that would have included a thorough medical background check of the worker who blacked out on the job. The NTSB would like to see that recommendationapplied to all U.S. commercial passenger vessels, including ferries.

In 2010, that recommendation remains unaddressed. Accidents that could have been prevented continue to add up. Many Americans are boarding boats every day that have no regular safety checkup.

Because the investigation into the 2010 accident is still underway, it’s unknown whether a safety management system would have prevented it — but it probably wouldn’t have hurt.

Do you have a story about being a ferry accident, or know someone who does? Do you use the Staten Island ferry or another ferry system regularly? Do you feel safe?

Get in touch with reporter Ariel Zirulnick (ariel.zirulnick@news21.com) if you would like to share your experiences with this topic.