The Role of the Human Factor in Marine Accidents

Abstract

A common interest of all shipping industry stakeholders is safe and accident-free shipping. To reach that goal, one of the most important actions that can be done is to analyze previous marine accidents. It means finding causes of accidents and, based on the analysis results, implementing effective corrective measures that can help reduce such undesired events in the future and improve safety efforts in shipping. Since it is widely accepted that human error accounts for 80–85% of all marine accidents, the research was focused on the human factor analysis in marine accidents. In this paper, 135 marine accident reports recorded in the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) database from 2010 to 2019 were analyzed. The analysis aimed to categorize causal factors and discover the ones that are the most common. The Human Factor Analysis and Classification System for Maritime Accidents (HFACS-MA) method was used to be able to do so. Furthermore, multiple linear regression was used to determine the relationship between the number of accidents and the most common HFACS-MA causal factors. The research revealed that the causes of marine accidents are primarily dependent on two human factor categories and confirmed that by influencing those human factors categories, the number of marine accidents could be reduced and shipping safety improved in general.

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“…There are some well-established methods for determining risk assessment. Much research has been done on risk assessment at sea (Jin et al, 2002, Haapasaari et al, 2015, Awal and Hasegawa, 2017, Hasanspahić et al, 2021. Several methods for risk assessment have been reported in the literature.…”

“…The other reasons like falling asleep on the bridge, lack of experience, and leaving the helm unattended can lead to consequences like sinking of the ship and death of the fishing vessel were mentioned by Soykan (2018). While not enough to reduce incidents at sea caused by human error, engineers over the past five decades have focused on technological improvements in hull design, ship propulsion, auxiliary deck equipment, navigation, and safety equipment (Formela et al, 2019;Hasanspahić et al, 2021).…”

“…Numerous studies have identified human error as the most important factor influencing accident occurrence (Roberts et al, 2010;Awal and Hasegawa, 2017;Kim and Na, 2017;Fan et al, 2020;Hasanspahić et al, 2021;Demirci et al, 2022). However, looking at these studies in general, environmental factors influence accident occurrence in almost all of them (Kim and Kang, 2011;Pleskacz, 2015).…”

Shipping Accident Analysis in Restricted Waters: Lesson from the Suez Canal Blockage in 2021

“…A dynamic fuzzy BN was developed to list unsafe preconditions and unsafe supervision as the top two considerations for human factors analysis in maritime accidents, especially for supervision failures of shipping companies and ship owners (Qiao et al, 2020). Furthermore, a Human Factor Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) framework was proposed to identify human factors using multiple linear regression (Hasanspahic et al, 2021) and fault tree model (Zhang et al, 2019c). It can also be integrated with BN to reveal accident formation patterns and show that the inland and aged vessels were important factors in sinking and grounding incidents (Ugurlu et al, 2020).…”

Legal Disputes under Time Charter in Connection with the Stranding of the MV Ever Given

“…Nonetheless, there exist implied obligations for both the captain and the pilot, such as the obligation to share information in real time regarding distinct weather changes, shallow water effects, bank effects, etc., that could occur in narrow channels such as the Suez Canal, as well as the obligation to get a grasp on the vessel's situation through the appropriate use of duty officers and helmsmen who are assigned to the bridge [37,67]. Therefore, if negligence in navigation (resulting from the concerned parties' negligent management of the vessel) is proven to be the direct cause of the accident in the future, it is judged that there will be liabilities for each subject; moreover, the "perils of the seas rivers lakes or other navigable waters", which is contained in Clause 6, paragraph 1 of the English Institute Time Clauses-Hulls, 1983 [68], as well as the "negligence of Master, Officers, Crew or Pilots" in Clause 6, paragraph 2 (3), are included in the perils covered [69,70].…”