The purpose of the International Safety Management Code (the ISM Code) is to promote safety culture in the maritime industry. Learning the lessons from incidents should help to improve safety performance since incidents and accidents can share the same root causes. The aim of this paper is to take a closer look at incident reporting in the Finnish shipping industry, to study the reasons for poor incident reporting and to suggest improvements to increase reporting. The paper consists of a literature study, which focuses on previous studies concerning incident reporting, and an interview study, which focuses on Finnish shipping companies and their personnel. The interview study confirmed that incident reporting does not function properly within the Finnish maritime industry. The maritime personnel have an occupational culture which is incompatible with the rule-based safety management approach provided by the ISM Code. The willingness to report incidents could be increased if all seafarers were involved in the reporting process and the preparation of corrective actions. In addition, the reporting procedures should be streamlined and developed to a more user-friendly direction.

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of the current maritime safety policy system as a whole. It offers an overview of different kinds of policy instruments that are used to enhance maritime safety and the criteria for effective policy instruments. It provides a criticism and goes through the weak points of the current maritime safety policy system, and finally, the system is analyzed in the light of the criteria for effective policy. The paper is based on literary sources, mainly on articles published in academic journals. The conclusion of the article is that the development of individual policies will not greatly improve the current level of maritime safety, and more fundamental changes are needed in the governance of maritime safety. IntroductionAccidents at sea and increasing volumes of maritime traffic, especially the transportation of dangerous cargoes, have given rise to a growing awareness of the safety of maritime traffic. International maritime safety regulation has a long history. Regulation is continuously revised and developed further in numerous maritime safety related issues by several actors. Instead of looking at individual policies, it is sometimes important to think about the system as a whole and its foundations. Do the current maritime safety policies achieve the goals they are meant to achieve, are they effective, and is there a need for change?This paper presents the criteria for effective policy instruments, and it evaluates the current maritime safety policy system as a whole in the light of those criteria. The paper includes a short description and a critique of the maritime safety policy system. The paper is mainly a literature review on the effectiveness of maritime safety policy. The structure of the paper is as follows. Firstly, the criteria for effective policy instruments and a tool for evaluation of maritime policy instruments (Formal Safety Assessment FSA) are presented. Secondly, regulatory bodies of maritime safety and preventive maritime safety policy instruments are reviewed. Next, the article discusses a critique and weak points of the system. Finally, the maritime safety policy system is evaluated against the criteria for effective policy in the light of the critique of a system, and the findings of the study are discussed in the end.

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