> But you can see a lot of frustration shine through towards the owners who even in light of the preliminary findings had changed absolutely nothing on the rest of their fleet.
Between making money, perceived culpability and risks offloaded to insurance companies why would they?
> The problem is that there are a thousand merchant marine vessels operating right now that are all doing great
Are they tho?
I generally think you have good takes on things, but this comes across like systemic fatalistic excuse making.
> The recommendation to inspect the whole ship with an IR camera had me laughing out loud.
Where did this come from? What about the full recommendations from the NTSB. This comment makes it seem like you are calling into question the whole of the NTSB's findings.
"Don't look for a villain in this story. The villain is the system itself, and it's too powerful to change."
> Between making money, perceived culpability and risks offloaded to insurance companies why would they?
Because it is the right thing to do, and the NTSB thinks so too.
>> The problem is that there are a thousand merchant marine vessels operating right now that are all doing great
> Are they tho?
In the sense that they haven't caused an accident yet, yes. But they are accidents waiting to happen and the owners simply don't care. It usually takes a couple of regulatory interventions for such a message to sink in, what the NTSB is getting at there is that they would expect the owners to respond more seriously to these findings.
>> The recommendation to inspect the whole ship with an IR camera had me laughing out loud.
> Where did this come from?
Page 58 of the report.
And no, obviously I am not calling into question the whole of the NTSB's findings, it is just that that particular one seems to miss a lot of the realities involving these vessels.
> "Don't look for a villain in this story. The villain is the system itself, and it's too powerful to change."
I don't understand your goal with this statement, it wasn't mine so the quotes are not appropriate and besides I don't agree with it.
Loose wires are a fact of life. The amount of theoretical redundancy is sufficient to handle a loose wire, but the level of oversight and the combination of ad-hoc work on these vessels (usually under great time pressure) together are what caused this. And I think that NTSB should have pointed the finger at those responsible for that oversight as well, which is 'MARAD', however, MARAD does not even rate a mention in the report.
Oh, there are plenty of villains here. But they're in offices and wearing ties.
And they should be smacked down hard, but that isn't going to happen because then - inevitably - the role of the regulators would come under scrutiny as well. That is the main issue here. The NTSB did a fantastic job - as they always do - at finding the cause, it never ceases to amaze me how good these people are at finding the technical root cause of accidents. But the bureaucratic issues are the real root cause here: an industry that is running on wafer thing margins with ships that probably should not be out there, risking peoples lives for a miserly wage.
Regulators should step in and level the playing field. Yes, that will cause prices of shipping to rise. But if you really want to solve this that is where I think they should start and I am not at all saying that the system is too powerful to change, just that for some reason they seem to refuse to even name it, let alone force it to change.
Fwiw and since you received several comments about it, your first comment did not come off to everyone as making excuses. It was pretty clear you were trying to turn peoples attention to the real problem.
There was also no fatalistic tone about the system being too powerful to change. Just clear sharing of observations IMO.
It is not unusual to receive this reaction (being blamed for fatalism and making excuses) from observations like these, I have noticed.
I suspect a lot of people commenting in this thread have never been on one of these ships or have any idea of what the typical state of maintenance is, and how inaccessible the tech compartments are when the vessel is underway. This isn't exactly a server room environment. When vessels are new (in the first five years or so) and under the first owners they are usually tip-top. Then, after the first sale the rot sets in and unless there is a major overhaul you will see a lot of issues like these, usually they do not have such terrible consequences. They tend to last for 25 years or so (barring mishaps) and by then the number of repairs will be in the 100's and the vessel has changed hands a couple of times.
Passenger carrying vessels are better, but even there you can come across some pretty weird stuff.
I agree with all of this and everything you've said thus far. I hope my prior comment was not interpreted as some sort of indictment or attack on your motives.
Between making money, perceived culpability and risks offloaded to insurance companies why would they?
> The problem is that there are a thousand merchant marine vessels operating right now that are all doing great
Are they tho?
I generally think you have good takes on things, but this comes across like systemic fatalistic excuse making.
> The recommendation to inspect the whole ship with an IR camera had me laughing out loud.
Where did this come from? What about the full recommendations from the NTSB. This comment makes it seem like you are calling into question the whole of the NTSB's findings.
"Don't look for a villain in this story. The villain is the system itself, and it's too powerful to change."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Scott_Key_Bridge_colla...