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Captain Irving observes:
The report on the analysis of responses to the questionnaire sent out by the Nautical Institute in September 2002 was presented to the International Command Seminar on 22 May by Captain Roger Syms FNI (available for download below).
The questionnaire asked for opinions on the situation at sea in respect of compliance with, and understanding of the Colregs. Responses mirrored comments in MARS reports. A significant number claimed that the actions of others are often contrary to the Colregs, and many offered disregard and ignorance as the most common causes.
Our questions about conduct in reduced visibility produced conflicting results. On the one hand, almost everybody who responded obeyed the rules, but hardly anybody else did! We asked about the use of VHF for collision avoidance and we can conclude from the study that opinion is evenly divided on that issue. Answers about inappropriate use of lights and shapes show that fishing vessels are seen as the worst offenders, but that misuse of NUC and deep draft signals is also significant.
Some worrying statistics have come out of the analysis of distractions. Perhaps not surprisingly, GMDSS alarms create the greatest number of distractions, but these are followed by internal interruptions and legitimate radio traffic. The issue here is to assess when normal distractions may become critical and how to manage them.
The results from the scenarios were surprising and it is intended to cover each scenario in more depth in a series of mini-features in the Institute’s journal Seaways. This will enable readers to consider each case in detail and I hope they will contribute their responses to the scenarios and to the study in general. These mini-features will also be available in the download section of this site.
When suggesting means to improve Colregs discipline, respondents wanted improved education and training, additional experience, better supervision and more rigorous exams. Before we go down that route, however, we have to know what the problem is. With scenario 2 for example, nearly all the respondents got the answer wrong. The rules are the same for everybody and so we must look closely for the reasons for this.
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The study has most definitely identified that there are significant issues to address. We are probably not talking in terms of collisions at this stage but about underlying factors which, if unchecked, could lead to risk of collision and ultimately to an incident.
I am sure The Nautical Institute is not the only organisation to be concerned about these anomalies but we are probably the best one to collect and codify work carried out in a central, open access, resource. We have therefore created this website to contain the full version of the Institute’s analysis and I invite all interested parties to let us know about their work in the knowledge that it made available to all. If you have relevant information to contribute please notify us of it.
So I repeat my invitation to readers to contribute their responses to open debate and for all interested parties to inform the Institute about their work. In about six months’ time I intend to review the outcome of your replies and the considered views of others interested in this subject, with a view to making recommendations to Council.
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