Abstract
The paper discusses various aspects of how planning and design can contribute to a safer operation of ro-ro passenger vessels. In order to develop safer systems one needs to have a firmer understanding of why accidents happen. It seems that case-based analysis of well documented accidents has a considerable potential. This requires however that the causation concept is developed. The accident scenarios may further be analysed and presented through fault tree analysis. This tool is well suited for dealing with the numerous aspects and variations observed for each of the accident types. This is demonstrated for grounding and flooding scenarios. (A)