Stating the obvious in terms of accidents
Posted on | May 30, 2010 | 1 Comment
Nobody can really be surprised that the sudden enthusiasm for steaming slowly and spending extensive periods at anchor has tended to reduce the number of casualties.
But it is good to have the statistical evidence from the European Maritime Safety Agency’s recently published Maritime Review. A 20% decrease in accidents over the previous year is pretty convincing and suggests that there is a high price to be paid for operating constantly at full throttle, as everyone was during the boom years.
It could, of course be a somewhat simplistic reaction to assume that less haste means fewer accidents. In previous serious downturns there have been more, not fewer accidents, largely because maintenance has been treated as an optional extra, and every conceivable cost, mainly that of manpower, has been squeezed to the absolute limit.
How do we know that this EMSA figure is not a glitch, and next year will not reveal the dastardly dividend from the cost cutbacks? Hopefully, the fact that there is a far closer scrutiny of ship quality during this recession, will mean that maintenance defaulters will be identified more quickly, and those employing cheap incompetents will be found out.
But EMSA seems convinced that driving ships flat out in boom times invariably causes casualties and that having a little more time to look before you leap saves lives and property. Still, even though “only” 52 seafarers lost their lives in European waters, compared to 82 the previous year, there is clearly room for improvement. Some say these comparisons take insufficient notice of Lady Luck. One bad accident can knock all the preconceived trends down like skittles. Keep your fingers crossed.
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May 31st, 2010 @ 4:07 am
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