An Automatic Collision Avoidance and Guidance System for Marine Vehicles in Confined Waters

Abstract

There can be little doubt that the overall standards of safety at sea are high, particularly with the traditional maritime nations. Cockcroft states that of a total of 22600 ships over 1000 g.r.t trading in 1979, 9400 were from the traditional maritime nations. He goes on to say that during the period 1977–9 these countries lost 16 ships out of a total of 189 worldwide losses. Thus the traditional maritime nations ran 41·59 per cent of the ships and incurred only 8·4 per cent of the losses. This does suggest that high standards are not universal and there may be considerable resentment among operators of high standard ships when casualties to sub-standard vessels result in the implementation of measures, such as marine traffic management systems, which give rise to increased operating costs.