The article presents the substantiation of efficiency of sea transport in the world transport system. The main condition of ensuring water safety is equipment of ships with fail-safe and effective collective life-saving equipment (CLSE). Today the standard rescue operation when using CLSE is a series-parallel action of the ship’s crew, where the ship is sinking on an even keel, or with a slight roll to one side. It has been stated that such cases are extremely rare. As a rule, the situation develops rapidly. Accident statistics disposes to developing the modern approaches to the safety of human life at sea. There are two directions for safety ensuring. One of them is the development and implementation of artificial intelligence systems for CLSE, when CLSE independently, without human control, responds to the emergency with greater probability of the ship loss and the crew death. Another direction is when there is no need to save the crew (in case of unmanned ships). There are considered the Russian diesel engines for the lifeboats: specialized marine diesels 4CHSP9.5/11 - Caspiy 30M and 4CHSP9.5/11 - Caspiy 40. Both engines are equipped with a dual start-up system - manual and electric starter, they have a reverse gear transmission, a single-circuit flow-through sea water cooling system, decompression devices and standard mounted units, ac-cording to the requirements of the International Convention of Saving Life at Sea (SOLAS) and the International Code of Life-Saving Appliances (LSA Code). In modern environment, the scientific foundations and technical solutions are being developed to ensure the reliable start-up of swirl-chamber diesel engines by exposing the fuel to physical fields, without using glow plugs