Speed Control: A Useful Tool of VTS

Extract

This paper discusses some of the implications of speed control in the vessel traffic picture, emphasizing how speed relates to other safety factors so that control can be utilized with understanding and sensitivity. Speed control can seldom if ever be examined in isolation. The structuring of vessel traffic schemes implies a need for some form of speed control as an integral part of almost all those schemes. One technique reinforces the other. Speed limits become extremely critical at the lower end of the speed scale, the higher the traffic density, the more critical the limits. Again, the requirement for enforcement becomes clear. No over-emphasis of these operational limitations should be allowed to cloud the indisputable fact that — for the individual ship as well as for traffic management — speed control can be a most useful tool. At least three papers have been published in recent years pointing out that speed reduction by ships for safety purposes, either by individual ships themselves or through general imposition by a shore-based vessel traffic system (VTS), needs in all cases to be used with great care, reluctance even. Their warnings can easily be turned into a negative approach to such control. A number of points would therefore seem to demand looking at again.