THE INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS FOR PREVENTING COLLISION AT SEA (COLREG) BETWEEN UNDERSTANDING AND APPLICATION

In the past few years, Maritime collision became one of the most significant and repetitive threats to ships while sailing in the international or inland waterways or even inside the port. By analyzing collision accidents, it is apparent that 90% of these accidents were caused by human errors (EMSA, 2016). As a result, the international maritime organization (IMO) started to conduct thorough studies which aiming at analyzing human errors as a primary cause of collision accidents. This analysis has showed that there are many sub-factors that increase the probability of these errors like being unaware of the rules or misunderstanding it; which lead to the unsuccessful application of the collision regulation rules. Another sub-factor is the fatigue that affects decision makers inside the bridge during maneuvering (Saleh, 1998). As a result, a number of amendments were made in 2001 and 2007 to overcome these causes. However, these amendments were insufficient due to the frequent reoccurrence of collision accidents at sea during the last period. Thus, the aim of the present study is to prove and show those who work in the maritime transport, whether masters or marine officers or specialists in maritime arbitration, that there is still some failures and contradictions in the collision regulations, despite the amendments of 2001 and 2007. This has led to misunderstanding and wrong application of these rules; and consequently taking the wrong decisions during maneuvering those results in frequent collision accidents at sea. Therefore, the study in hand aims at studying and analyzing marine accidents that took place in random places all over the world statistically. It also aims at studying some of the COLREGS' sections in order to propose some suggested modifications to these rules to reduce such kind of accidents