Is ship safety improving?
While total vessel losses continue to decrease year on year, registered GMDSS data indicates a significant increase in distress calls, up from 749 in 2021 to 853 in 2022. On top of this, the number of marine casualties and incidents reported each year, and the type of accidents and incidents, remains stubbornly consistent.
The top three vessels that made the most distress calls in 2022
Tankers, container ships and bulk carriers sent the most GMDSS distress calls in 2022 (by rate - the number of calls received / number of vessels in that vessel category), with the lowest number of calls originating from passenger ships. Twelve year-old vessels (all types) are responsible for sending the most GMDSS distress calls.
Improving maritime safety
Current levels of risk cannot be accepted. Safety data and reports can be used to proactively tackle the root causes of repeated and well-known safety issues to reduce incidence rates, rather than just monitor trends and improve incident response.
Maritime safety can be improved by more broadly adopting goal-based safety standards; formalising data collection arrangements; creating and utilising a standardised international marine casualty and incident dataset and sharing anonymised data between international and national safety bodies.
Rather than defaulting to the development of more regulations, shipping could, in the short-term, adopt an overarching and unifying safety goal and set of underlying KPIs. This will enable regulatory impact to be objectively assessed, improvement areas to be prioritised, and the impact of consequent safety initiatives to be measured over time.
