Risky Cruise Ships
link BBC News – Concordia disaster: How safe are modern cruise ships?.
Of course it is possible that Captain Francesco Schettino was on his cell phone or texting at the time, causing him to lose track of where the ship was, resulting in the big fender bender. If being on a cell phone while driving a car is bad, doing it while steering a ship the length of 4 football fields is the Super Bowl of OOPS!. Following the wreck of the cruise ship Costa Concordia, interested parties from all sides are giving their spin on root causes. At the moment, the “Captain is at fault” theory is most popular, from the cruise line owner all the way down of course to the future plaintiffs, of which there will be many.
Apart from the horror that the passengers had to endure from being unceremoniously dumped into the Mediterranean, they also had to watch the brave captain desert the ship, cartoon roadrunner-like in a puff of smoke. Of course the real grief is about to come and the victims will be people who weren’t even on the ship. The grief will be inflicted upon all future cruise passengers.
I’m referring of course to experts, lawyers and other professional nanny types who will now review the safety of the cruise ship industry. There will be countless studies commissioned to determine how to prevent such an accident and to assess the safety of travellers. While we all know that the root cause is operator error, no doubt the results of exhaustive studies will result in numerous new procedures to be imposed on future travellers. Higher costs due to ‘safety fees’ will be a given. The real nuisance will be the new safety procedures mandated by regulators. The most annoying one will be the requirement to wear life jackets throughout the trip, even while sleeping. You never know. As it is, cruisers have to sign a lengthy waiver upon boarding anyway. Sailing on a cruise ship arguably isn’t as safe as say, sitting in one’s living room, but it ain’t bungee jumping either.
The cruise ship industry spends billions of dollars to build ships with the most technologically advanced materials, navigation systems and implement the most stringent naval protocols. The last time a big cruise ship sank was almost 100 years ago in 1912 when the Titanic brushed up against an iceberg. Over the past 100 years, there have been hundreds of thousands of voyages by cruise ships without any big disasters thanks to improvements in materials, technology and techniques. (The Poseidon Adventure doesn’t count ) Despite this, all it takes is one human screw up to negate all of those efforts. So, as in all aspects of our modern life, procedures will be implemented on the many because of the stupid actions of a few.
Most jurisdictions now ban the use of mobile phones in cars because apparently, people can’t be trusted to drive and carry a conversation at the same time. While eating, applying makeup, fiddling with the stereo, shaving or arguing with the spouse is ok, talking is not. Recently, there was reported the ‘alarming’ statistic that there was a big jump in fatalities involving people wearing earpieces while walking along roads. It’s a fair bet that there will be laws passed against this soon. Either the wearing of headphones will be banned or people will be required to wear big reflectors on the back of their heads.
And then there’s TSA procedures at the airports, don’t get us started on that. What’s happening now is unnatural and is only pushing back against theories of evolution. When you try to protect against every possible vicissitude of life, paradoxically, the species is weakened. The species will lose their own ability to survive in anything other than a completely benign environment, like pet turtles in a bowl or Democrats in California.
To determine if cruising is safe is like trying to determine if the plate was at fault when someone chokes while eating. There is no fail-safe against operator error. As in most aspects of life, the solution is elegantly simple. Punish the idiots, leave every one else alone.