Accidents during marine transport of dangerous goods. Distribution of fatalities

Abstract

Abstract On the basis of 2781 accident case histories, the consequences measured by the number of fatalities from marine accidents (n = 1780) during transport of dangerous goods have been investigated and compared with those from other transport modes (n = 1001). Accidents from marine transport of dangerous goods have been found to have a larger proportion of accidents with fatalities in the range of 10–50 than other transport modes. Therefore, f N curves for marine accidents are not similar to straight lines as usually seen but have a hump. This is probably due to the size of the potentially affected population, which is often in the range of 10–50 during marine transport, reflecting the number of crew members on one or two vessels; further, the population potentially affected is placed in a limited area. Almost all accidents with more than 40 fatalities were collisions, and accidents with more than 100 fatalities were due to collisions between tankers and ferries, which significantly increases the population at risk. In these accidents, the dangerous goods were oil. The high number of fatalities is not surprising, as oil at sea has the potential for surrounding a vessel and catching fire. Differences have been found for the distribution of fatalities between different local surroundings and transport phases. Similarity has been found for the distribution of fatalities for type of cargo, tank type, geographical location and year of accident.