Andrew Moll OBE, Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents at the Marine Accident Investigation Branch writes, “Welcome to MAIB’s second Safety Digest of 2022. I will start in the usual manner by thanking Julian Hughes, Jim Portus and Rachel Andrews for their respective introductions to the merchant, fishing and recreational sections of this edition. Each is an expert in their own field, and their industry insights to safety help bring contemporary context to the cautionary tales in the following pages. I hope you will find time to read the whole edition – there is something here for every mariner – but please do read the section introductions. And, when you have finished, please pass the digest on so others can benefit too.
We tend to think of the news as something fairly transient. Our media quickly moves on to the next sensational story and, to use an old saying from the days when chip shops wrapped food in newspaper to keep it warm, “Today’s headlines are tomorrow’s chip wrappers”. But the real world is not like that. Accidents have consequences, and Julian Hughes’s description of how passing through a powered watertight door affected him is a fantastic example of how an accident can resonate and impact on people’s behaviour long after the event itself.
The real trick, however, is to try and prevent accidents before they happen and people are injured, and this needs what in the trade we call precautionary thought. Something akin to this occurred last year in the lead up to my daughter’s wedding when her fiancé’s biggest concern was running out of tonic at the reception. A year on, as a family we are still drinking our way through out-of-date bottles of the stuff. Perhaps we should have purchased the extra on sale-or-return, but for the event itself the risk had been identified and effective action was taken to mitigate it; the bar did not run out of tonic!
Running out of tonic might not be a suitable example for a serious ‘lessons learned’ publication, but it helps emphasise the point Rachel Andrews makes in her introduction to the recreational section, Before leaving … we need a plan. If I can add to that, a plan needs to consider not just what we intend to do, but also what we will do if something goes wrong. The plan also needs reviewing and adjusting to changes, such as recovering a trawl and heading home early if the weather forecast changes for the worse.
In their early stages, accident investigations can be highly pressured and intense as we try to capture perishable evidence before it is lost. But every investigation needs a plan, and time has to be set aside and the effort made for review as the plan unfolds. Another old saying, but it works for me, “Time spent planning is never wasted”.
Download the digest: MAIB Safety Digest 2/2022
