Risk Management

It takes a fairly large and dramatic event in the maritime world for it to make the general media's headlines. Given the large numbers of people throughout the world who have enjoyed some form of cruise experience on a ship, last week's grounding and subsequent beaching of the Costa Concordia off of Italy's Tuscan coast was bound to be front page news.

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There are many 'lessons learned' that will no doubt come out of the investigation of this incident but, for me, it is yet another example of poor risk management. The technological advances in navigation such as GPS, DGPS, ECDIS and AIS have instilled in some mariners a sense of invulnerability to the hazards around them. In consequence, safety margins get narrowed, speeds are maintained at an elevated level in situations where common sense would tell you to use caution.

This attitude is not unique to the marine world, however. You merely need to drive along any major highway in order to witness extremely risky behaviour such as tailgating or excessive speed or erratic driving or using phone devices or even texting while at the wheel!

A sailing friend gave me my first lesson when handling a sailboat: "If you think you might need to put a reef in the sail, do it; and if you are thinking about shaking a reef out of a sail, wait."

Human error is frequently sighted as the major cause of accidents with the Costa Concordia incident most probably being included in this category. Still, our perception that technology will save us from the folly of our own lack of prudence is perhaps the largest error of all.