The Impact of Radar on the Rule of the Road

Extract

Commander Clissold's article (Journal19, 109) like others before it seems to base the supposition that a new Rule is required on the idea that the collisions occur today because the present Rules are not good enough. I do not think that this contention is borne out by the evidence in cases of collision that come to Court; those are really the only ones on which conclusions should be based as very few people know what happened in the others. There is also a suggestion in his article that, before the days of radar, the Rules were adequate to prevent collisions happening. This is not so either; there were too many collisions in those days and they were caused by very much the same sort of behaviour as they are today. One should not, perhaps, think about the past success or failure of the Rules without remembering that it is not only the land which has become crowded in this century.