Analysis on the Measures of Collision Avoidance and Legal Liability of Vessels at Anchor in Collision Accidents

Abstract

When the risk of collision exists between a ship underway and an anchored ship, the ship underway should take active measures to avoid the collision as required by the rules, but it doesn’t release the anchored ship’s obligation to take all possible measures to avoid the collision or reduce the consequences of the collision. It is often misunderstood that the anchored ships do not bear the liabilities for collision losses, or only bear a small proportion of the responsibility due to the limitation of their maneuvering ability. However, in practice of maritime trial, lots of anchored ships were decided by the maritime courts to have faults and bear the liabilities for the collision damages because they failed to maintain a proper lookout, detect the presence of the collision risk in time, and issue a warning of the danger to related ships, or failed to notify the master of the own ship to heave up anchor for emergency manoeuvring. This paper, through statistical analysis of a large number of cases related to ship collision cases, analyzes the requirements of laws and regulations on the duty of anchored ships, the common faults and the difficulties and obstacles in taking action by anchored ships to avoid collision, studies a great number of maritime cases, summarizes the lessons learned from those cases, and put forward the reasonable and lawful suggestions and actions by the anchored ships to avoid collision so as to provide advice for shipping companies, ship managers, ship masters and crew members.