The Maritime Economist Magazine Spring 2015 | Page 32

THEMARITIME Economist

Profession & Practice

Are shipping regulations based on skewed
accident investigations?

ME Mag

Barnett, Gatfield and Pekcan, (2006) suggest that
accident analysis is relatively immature in the
maritime world as little scientific analysis is undertaken
to identify the trends and patterns. Even less analysis is
attempted in assessing the significance or frequency of
organisational factors such as incidence of commercial
pressure or effects of organisation culture when
categorising causal factors to be human errors of
people at the sharp end. Macrae (2009) laments
that studies consistently estimated 80% of causes in
marine accidents being attributable to human factors
which traditionally have been viewed as individual,
cognitive or behavioural issues caused merely by
ignorance or carelessness, without any recognition of
influence of organisational context in shaping errors.
Schroder-Hinrechs et al. (2012) while critically
reviewing the focus of maritime accident investigations
also suggest that organization factors do not receive
sufficient attention.

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Organisational culture plays an important part in
reinforcing the appropriate behaviour required
on board. If the organisation’s own shore-based
management team pays “lip-service” to its own
operating policies by failing to implement them on
the vessel and at the same time tacitly accepting or
rewarding deviant behaviour (not reducing speed
in restricted visibility was a matter of routine), then
the individual officers on-board will adopt a similar
cultural attitude. A remedial action of simply sending the
“offenders” to remedial training would not resolve
the root cause to the violation. It is a matter of fact
(Bhattacharya, 2009) that managers largely subscribe
to the human error theory that assumes workers
behaving irrationally or wrongly applying the rule or
plain being unmotivated as main cause for workplace
accidents and incidents. As a result the corrective
actions get directed to tackling seafarers’ behavioural
attributes rather than the root cause of accidents which
is the commercial pressures of the organization.

Are causes of accidents even constructed
rather than objectively looked for?

The error investigations can have differing
objectives and purpoes that depends on the
investigator’s perspective. Sanders and Neville (1991)
confirm that what is deemed to be the cause of an
accident depends on the purpose of the
inquiry. For example, the accident investigations are
commissioned by vessel owners, management
companies and more often by Hull and Machinery
Underwriters with a sole view for apportionment
of liability towards hull and machinery damage of
vessels involved in the subject accident for the sake
of final settlement of the eventual claim of the vessels
towards hull and machinery damages.
Another, and perhaps more damaging reason for
restricting the cause of accident to lie on-board
the ship itself and not extending to the overarching
forces of poor organisation support and practices
lies in the liability and insurance regime that covers
‘negligence of seafarers clause’ admissible for pay out
of insurance. For example, the Institute Time Clauses
– Hulls (1983) (pp 107) on Particular average2
damage to vessel states:
6.2 This insurance covers loss of or damage to the
subject-matter insured caused by
6.2.3 negligence of Master, officers, crew or pilots,
provided such loss or damage has not resulted from
want of due diligence by the Assured, Owners or
Managers.
This severely restricts the enquiry process of getting
any deeper than the human error of those on-board,
additionally ensuring that no cause gets relegated
to management ashore lest insurance benefits be
forfeited.
Concluding remarks

The shipping industry in its measure of success, while
contributing to the causes of globalisation, has itself
become a victim of circumstances. It is found to
progressively regress in its vital safety practices that
are seen to result not merely from a deregulated
economic and organisational environment, but a
2 Particular average means a partial loss caused by a peril insured against and
which is not a general average loss (Marine Insurance Act 1906).