Man over board ?

[chengkp75]

I won't quote your post to save room, but again, I say, fine if you want to know the details of an industrial accident, if it were such, but how do you know that those in charge have done everything they can to mitigate the risks, unless as I say, you wait a few months until the root cause analysis is done, and the corrective action has moved up and back down the corporate ladder following the prescribed process to ensure that the ship is notified of any pertinent changes?  Just saying that a man fell because of a failed fall arresting gear, doesn't tell you anything really about the accident (what was the root cause?  uninspected PPE, the person not being trained properly in its use, the person not following procedure by not wearing the required PPE?) or about the corporate culture of safety, or the measures taken to remedy this.  When someone is killed in an industrial accident on land, do you see the final report of every accident?  Of course not.  Only when there is a court case, and it must become public.  A simple statement of the facts of the incident is worthless in making judgements.

[Don'tNeedAName]

Thanks, Chief--yes, I don't disagree with your points there, and having read that, I think we might be talking (or, typing, rather) to slightly different things.  I agree that a simple statement of the facts would not support making a judgment on any particular case.  However, the public does not need to make a judgment with respect to every case.  Instead, I view it more that the public as a whole should be kept informed of the general goings-on in areas of public concern, including employee safety.

 

Thus, I only take issue with the statement that how it happened is only of concern to the immediate parties involved, and potentially law enforcement.  Because I believe employee safety is a matter of great public concern, I therefore believe it is reasonable to expect the reporting of the circumstances of a situation like this to the public, even if it is not necessarily a full technical breakdown.

 

In an extreme case of dumbing this down to my level, say another report comes out next month that an employee died because of "Problem X" with no further detail.  Then the next month, and the month after, etc.  The public would not need to know the root cause of each occurrence of Problem X to raise the concern as to why Problem X keeps resulting in deaths.  The experts would be evaluating individual cases, but I think if Problem X keeps popping up, but I believe it would also be incumbent upon the general public to pressure elected officials into asking the "whys" and "hows" to get the more technical detail and ensure that appointed regulators are taking action.  Arguably, this puts entirely too much trust in the old notion of "the press" or "the people" being the "fourth branch of government," but I admit I am still a bit idealistic in that regard--hopefully not to the extent of naivete!

 

In any event, I do appreciate your thoughts and insight.

[ProgRockCruiser]

On 7/8/2019 at 3:01 PM, chengkp75 said:

Even if they did disclose details of how this incident happened, would you expect a press release 3 months from now stating what new remediation practices were put in place to prevent it from happening again?  I don't know of any industry that does that.

 

The NTSB and FAA publish reports on all reported incidents related to aircraft in the US, owned by US people or companies, or built in the US - big news items like the B737Max crashes obviously, and on "minor" incidents like runway incursions or Cessnas running into fences.  ("WHILE TAXIING, RIGHT WING STRUCK FENCE.").  I think, based on what I have seen of their websites, that the FAA publishes preliminary reports for all incidents, and major incidents get final reports from the NTSB.

 

Transport Canada does a much better job at presenting the final reports, IMHO.

 

So yeah, if it was an industrial-accident type of incident I'd like to understand what went wrong and what may be done to prevent it from happening.  Press release?  Probably not warranted.  But it would be nice to know whether the incident is recorded somewhere and there is (or is not) a final report about it.

Edited July 9, 2019 by ProgRockCruiser

[chengkp75]

1 hour ago, ProgRockCruiser said:

 

The NTSB and FAA publish reports on all reported incidents related to aircraft in the US, owned by US people or companies, or built in the US - big news items like the B737Max crashes obviously, and on "minor" incidents like runway incursions or Cessnas running into fences.  ("WHILE TAXIING, RIGHT WING STRUCK FENCE.").  I think, based on what I have seen of their websites, that the FAA publishes preliminary reports for all incidents, and major incidents get final reports from the NTSB.

 

Transport Canada does a much better job at presenting the final reports, IMHO.

 

So yeah, if it was an industrial-accident type of incident I'd like to understand what went wrong and what may be done to prevent it from happening.  Press release?  Probably not warranted.  But it would be nice to know whether the incident is recorded somewhere and there is (or is not) a final report about it.

While I would consider your examples to be "in the public safety", you may disagree, so let's look at it.  All right, so the NTSB and FAA investigate incidents in their industry, which is mandated by US law, and the reports are made public as mandated by US law, those agencies don't investigate or report on incidents in other countries, do they?  And does OSHA publish reports on every industrial death in the US?  I don't know for sure, but I sure doubt it.  They may collect statistics, and they may investigate most fatalities, but as for publishing reports on each case, I don't believe so.  So, it is up to the jurisdiction where the incident happened to investigate and report on incidents as per their laws, not ours.  So, it is up to the flag state, and through them, the class society that they recognize as being competent to determine that the ship meets their laws regarding the international conventions involved (ISM mostly), to investigate the incident, and determine if the company meets their requirements for a proper ISM corrective action.  Whether that report is published to the public depends on how that country feels about it.  As the ISM documents for any shipping company are considered confidential documents and controlled documents, it would be rare, outside of a courtroom setting, for these documents, whether the main ISM document or any corrective action document to be published.  Had this happened in a US port, then an investigation could have been made by a US agency, and that report would be subject to US freedom of information laws.

[rattanchair]

Dear Chen,  Even when our US Coast Guard was alerted and on the scene?

[sanmarcosman]

I don't care to know what OSHA says about the guy who puts a new battery in my car and I don't think about the ISM when on a pleasure cruise with Carnival Cruise Line. I sleep great, too. 

[chengkp75]

2 hours ago, rattanchair said:

Dear Chen,  Even when our US Coast Guard was alerted and on the scene?

The USCG were involved because under the SAR convention, the US has agreed to provide SAR functions in this area of the seas.  Regardless of who, how, or why the person went overboard, unless it was in US waters, or from a US ship, the USCG would not do any investigation as to the reasons or causes.  If you want to enjoy the privileges and rights of US citizens at sea, you had better stick to US flag vessels.

[joepeka]

10 minutes ago, chengkp75 said:

The USCG were involved because under the SAR convention, the US has agreed to provide SAR functions in this area of the seas.  Regardless of who, how, or why the person went overboard, unless it was in US waters, or from a US ship, the USCG would not do any investigation as to the reasons or causes.  If you want to enjoy the privileges and rights of US citizens at sea, you had better stick to US flag vessels.

Exactly. And how many of those vessels are in the major cruise lines inventories? I can only think of one. 😉

Edited July 9, 2019 by joepeka

[rattanchair]

32 minutes ago, joepeka said:

Exactly. And how many of those vessels are in the major cruise lines inventories? I can only think of one. 😉

Dear Joe, Hawaii here I come! I just wonder how many Pinnacles are on board  (None).

Edited July 9, 2019 by rattanchair
additional info

[Organized Chaos]

On 7/8/2019 at 4:50 PM, chengkp75 said:

Nothing at all wrong with discussing it, if you so wish, but to expect that details of how or why this happened to be disseminated to the general public isn't reasonable.  Now, if a passenger were able to do this, much like the NCL "plank", and an accident happened, then yes, you would expect some form of explanation as to what happened and what is being done, but it still wouldn't be a guarantee that information would be forthcoming.

 

I wasn't expecting details to be released to the public. I didn't say I was. In fact, I think just the opposite, if this wasn't an accident, that is. If this was a case of a distraught crew member who intentionally jumped overboard, then I would more so expect the company (any company) not to release that information to the public. No cruise line wants to put it out there that their employees are distraught enough to do such a thing. As tragic as these incidents are, and as cold-hearted as it may seem, one of the first things companies will do in a situation like this is to assess any PR implications. They don't want the public thinking that conditions are such that it'd cause crew members to do something like this intentionally.

 

While it may or may not be any of our business, that's just how reporting newsworthy stories works. Imagine turning on your local news broadcast and hearing, "We're sorry, ladies & gentlemen, but we can't tell you the cause of this incident because it's none of your business." 🤨

[Host Carolyn]

Found a lot of this quite interesting but it's gone a bit off course and run its course