The Proposed Revision of the Collision Regulations

Extract

In October this year an international conference on the revision of the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea will be held in London. A working party appointed by the Maritime Safety Committee of Imco, under the chairmanship of Captain A. C. Manson of the Department of Trade and Industry, has drawn up proposals for the revision of the present regulations. Captain Manson described these proposals to an open session of the Technical Committee held in London on 17 May 1972 with Captain D. A. G. Dickens, an Elder Brother of Trinity House, in the Chair. Introducing the subject the Chairman said that the Institute, through its Journal, the discussions it had promoted on previous occasions, and through the working party set up in 1970, had taken a significant part in forming opinion on the issues involved. In particular perhaps it had ventilated the suggestions that collision avoidance might better be based on positive manœuvring instructions rather than by simply apportioning responsibility. The long-term influence of these suggestions may well be considerable even though they might not in the event be reflected in the Rules now being proposed.