The causes of maritime accidents in the period 2002-2016

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Category: Accidentes

Published on Wednesday, 10 August 2022 06:25

Written by Administrator2

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Introduction

Maritime safety has undoubtedly improved in the last century as a result of a combination of factors including: technological advancement; better training; and regulatory development (Allianz, 2012). However, despite such improvement seafaring remains a relatively dangerous occupation (Hansen, 1996; Roberts and Marlow, 2005; Borch et al., 2012). One way to improve safety at sea is to ‘learn’ from past accidents. For this purpose, maritime authorities around the world invest a considerable amount of resource in investigating accidents and producing reports. Most reports offer a detailed account of what took place and attempt to identify all the relevant factors and contributory causes. While they frequently provide rich information, meticulous analysis and detailed insight, such accident reports are generally read as isolated documents and therefore fail to shed light on general patterns or trends. To identify patterns, and lessons from accidents, it is helpful therefore to consider such documents ‘en masse’ and to systematically aggregate their findings as far as is reasonable. This is the aim of this report which builds upon an earlier paper which was published as part of the SIRC symposium proceedings in 2013 (Tang et al, 2013). The report constitutes an analysis of accident investigation reports that have been published on line by the (UK) Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB), the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), the (US) National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the Federal Bureau of Maritime Casualty Investigation in Germany, and the Danish Maritime Accident Investigation Board (DMAIB) in the period 2002-2016 (inclusive). Accident investigation reports from Maritime New Zealand have only been included for the period 2002-4. This is because their publication was discontinued in 2004. In preparing this report, a total of 693 accident reports were analysed. An interim paper was published in 2013 outlining the results from the first phase of the study which included 319 accident reports from the period 2002-2011. We subsequently analysed a further 374 reports in Phase 2 which were published in the period 2012-2016 (inclusive). Table 1 gives the breakdown of the accident reports by country of origin.