Analysis of bulk carrier and general cargo vessel accidents

Improvements in bulk carrier and general cargo vessels continue in light of the technological advancements. Even though there have been big improvements on the navigational safety of the modern ships, marine accidents have not completely been eliminated. Marine accident is a type of accident that can mainly lead to loss of life and property and serious environmental and legal problems. In this regard, it is immensely important to find the causes of marine accidents and to take precautionary measures to prevent them happening again. In this study, accident reports between November 2008 and October 2018 regarding 48 collisions and 25 groundings of bulk carrier and general cargo ships were examined. Open FTA (Fault Tree Analysis) was employed in the analysis of collision and grounding accidents of bulk carrier and general cargo vessels. Also, sensitivity analysis has been carried out. It was found that COLREG interpretation error was the most important accident reason in collision accidents. Furthermore, it was found that lack of communication in bridge resource management was the most important accident reason in grounding accidents. Moreover, ships that were involved in the accidents of collision and grounding were examined in terms of flag states, gross tonnages and the type of the casualties. In order to prevent the accidents; it is recommended in this study that the seamans must be trained meticulously, that flag states, port states and company managements must increase the supervisions on the ships.