(Bloomberg View) — Thanks to cockpit data recorders, investigators know the precise time Andreas Lubitz sent Germanwings Flight 9525 into a mountainside and the maneuvers he used to do so. But when it comes to evaluating Lubitz's psychology as the plane crashed, investigators have had little more to work from than a cockpit voice recording that, according to French prosecutors, revealed he was breathing steadily during the plane's descent. Images that more clearly portray Lubitz's state of mind — and offer more insight into how such tragedies can be prevented in the future — aren't available. That's because cockpit video cameras have never been required by any airline regulator.

Fortunately, that may soon change. According to a report last week in the Wall Street Journal, the International Civil Aviation Commission, the U.N. agency that sets global aviation safety standards, is preparing to make a “big push” for cockpit cameras later this year. (It's unclear whether it will recommend them, or outright require them.) In doing so, it will have the support of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S.'s lead airline accident investigator, which in January listed cockpit cameras among eight safety-related recommendations it made to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

At first glance, the proposal might seem like overkill. U.S. commercial aircraft have been equipped with data recorders since the late 1950s, and were required to install voice recorders in the 1960s. These days, voice recorders are required to log at least the last two hours of a flight's cockpit conversations, while flight data recorders are required to chronicle 88 separate parameters. (In practice, many recorders log over 1,000 parameters.) In the event of tragedy, those “black boxes” typically provide sufficient information to allow investigators to figure out what happened.