Why Ships Keep Crashing

Yes, if the topic was aviation safety and not maritime.

From Perrow again:

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Perrow explicitly says here there are problems with “specific parts or units of the airline and airways system”.

Perrow claims that maritime is “error-inducing” in contrast to the airway system.

If shipping companies were run and regulated like major passenger airlines, ship captains would be required and enabled to say No, and Hell No, a lot more often.

Shipping companies do not want that. It would interfere with maximizing profit.

If it were up to the shipping companies, ships would be run much less safely.

You are comparing apples and oranges. The USA based part 121 major passenger airlines are the very tip of the pyramid and have had a mostly unionized workforce for a long time. Even more important - everyone rides on them. People get upset when the airplanes that THEY RIDE ON crash because they very well could have been on it and if they weren’t on it, the plane could have ended up on their house.
How many people in the USA deeply care about dive boat safety? Some obviously, but 98% of them are never going to be sleeping on a dive boat. How many people in the USA deeply care about tug boat safety? Some obviously, but 98% of them don’t unless a tugboat runs them over.
Right now somewhere someone is about to get onto a tug that badly needs repairs and go anyway and somewhere some freight dog is about to climb in a an airplane that badly needs repairs and go anyway.

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I see the master of the MSC OPERA was given 5 years gaol for the technical fault that caused the remarkable progress of the ship through the port of Venice. The chief engineer and chief electrician copped 2 years apiece. I suppose that pilots should count themselves lucky that they don’t face imprisonment if the wings fall off.:wink:
I’m prepared to bet that the Suez Canal pilots offered a master class in avoiding their conversations being recorded by the VDR.

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It’s not me that making the comparison , It’s Charles Perrow in his book Normal Accidents. Perrow points out the the incentives towards safety are much weaker on the maritime side. That is the point of the section I posted in post #6. That’s why reforms are much slower on the maritime side. Perrow claims it will take decades (book was written 4 decades ago).

In the chapter on Aircraft and Airways Perrow says that system of commercial passenger air travel is error reducing while by contrast the Marine is error-inducing.

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He is correct as far as he goes within those narrow limits, but it would have been instructive to get into WHY one segment of aviation changed so much and the others not so much.
Like I said:

  1. General public rides on them
  2. VERY strong union

Perrow lists:

Pilots union
the flying congressment
easy identification of victims and perpertrators
easy access to courts
elasticity of demand

It’s in the section of the book I posted in post # 6

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By contrast maritime:

Identifiable victims are low status, unorganized or poorly organized

Third party victims of pollution and toxic spills are anonymous, random and effects delayed

Elites do not sail on Liberian tankers

Etc:

Reason_1

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They also do not fly on commercial airlines.
Fact of the matter is the FAA has done a pretty lousy job of oversight in recent years. Thanks to risk management by the airlines and blind luck they haven’t been called to task. It’ll take a crash or two killing at least a hundred US citizens to get them back up to speed.
Shipping incidents? Not on anyone’s radar but the insurers. Perhaps I missed it but has anything really changed regulatory wise since the El Faro?
Additionally, there were incidents in Alaska regarding Shell, Chouest, the Aviq, Discoverer and Kulluk a few years back. To my knowledge no one lost a license or went to jail and minimal fines were paid. Not much changes in a captured regulatory environment. Kinda like the “too big to fail” banks. Paying fines is just another business expense to be paid by the shareholders who don’t even notice the loss as in the grand scheme of things the fines are not detectible on the balance sheet.

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I don’t understand what you point is here. Elites don’t use commercial airlines therefore the incentives on the maritime side and aviation are the same? It seems obvious that the incentives differ.

Perrow doesn’t claim that improvements in safety are due to the FAA, in fact the chapter on aviation he is critical of the FAA. Although maybe kinder than he was on the maritime side where he says the regulatory side in the U.S is “apparently inept”.

Anyway, anyone can read Perrow and see what he does say about each sector:

It’s on-line here: http://geo.unibuc.ro/dm/Documents/[Charles_Perrow]_Normal_Accidents.pdf

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I’ve seen Jay Leno, Bob Costas, and a few political types on commercial airlines. They flew 1st class. I was further back on the plane.

Out of context it looks like I’m making that claim but I’m not.

However if I was to defend it I’d go with the no true Scotsman defense. :upside_down_face:


Ted Cruz, on his way to Cancun - apparently not a true elite.

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Real man of the people that one is!

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That’s an understatement. He’s just a senator being a senator or member of congress does not confer elite status, except in their own minds. They are financed by the elites that run the world which puts them in the category of employee. I notice Cruz skedaddled right back to Texas once it was discovered he ran off to Cancun while Texas was in crisis due to a winter storm. He’s either a case of someone being educated beyond their intelligence level or he just didn’t give a damn, until caught out.

Most certainly paid for.

The broader point, the one Perrow is making, is that the victims of marine accidents are, in his words: “low status, unorganized or poorly organized” and the victims “of pollution and toxic spills are anonymous, random and effects delayed”

Perrow claims that this is a factor wrt the difference in how marine vs passenger air accidents are treated.

In any case the private jets used by the true elites are still are part of what Perrow calls the “Airway system”.

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The last 20 or so pages of Perrow’s book, though written in 1984, are an excellent summation of the current state of affairs in accident prevention. Nothing has substantially changed since 1984.

You all are taking “elite” in the wrong context. Any American with a job that affords air travel is an “elite” compared to say a 3rd assistant bilge cleaner from the Philippines. People care when a passenger aircraft crashes, they could be next. People don’t really care what happens to 3rd world mariners.

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Some owners are going to use the regulations as a guide as to how a vessel should be operated. The thinking being If it’s not required it must not be needed.

A good example is the lawsuit wrt the use of VHF radios aboard tugs. Radios were not required at the time but it’s obvious now that they should have been standard equipment.

The regulations codify current good practice which protects the owners in countries where mariners have what Perrow calls “easy access to courts”.

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Owners need to learn that USCG regulations are merely BARE MINIMUM requirements for what the USCG thought was necessary years ago, often decades ago.

There are a lot of necessary, or at least very advantageous, things today that the USCG has never even considered regulating, especially on smaller vessels.

Also, backups are necessary, especially in long voyages away from technical support.

Most small vessels are Not required to have radar, and certainly not two radars. But who in their right mind would dispatch a vessel on a coastwise voyage without two good working radars.

Its not too uncommon to go aboard a tug that does not have a working echo sounder. The majority of tugs don’t have two echo Sounders.

I have encountered too many owners that are not in their right minds. They were cheap beyond any concept of rationality

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When lack of radar endangers the general public, you get rules:
§ 121.357 Airborne weather radar equipment requirements.

(a) No person may operate any transport category airplane (except C-46 type airplanes) or a nontransport category airplane certificated after December 31, 1964, unless approved airborne weather radar equipment has been installed in the airplane.

  • No idea how the C-46 got a carve-out, it is probably for ONE airplane in Alaska or something :roll_eyes:

** trivia fact, there is such a thing as an “echo sounder” for airplanes, it uses radio instead of sound. These too are required for certain operations.