Compared with the airline industry, the lack of a safety philosophy in shipping is notable. There should be no reason why the demands on safety concerning air traffic should not be required for traffic at sea. The term "human error" is quoted as the dominant cause of ship casualties, and it seems obvious that a system or program should be defined which minimises "human error". The project "Cause Relationship of Collisions and Groundings" was initiated in the light of the recognition that casualty data are not used to their full potential as far as learning from accidents is concerned. Collision, grounding and ramming accidents involving Norwegian ships have been analysed for the period 1970-1978. The paper gives a statistical summary of the general findings and a more detailed analysis of causal factors based on separate studies of segments of the material defined on the basis of casualty types and tonnage groups. As there appear to be clear differences in the cause relationships between the various segments, different methods of improvement are recommended for each of the five defined segments. (A)
Abstract