Svårlösta trafiksituationer - Styrmäns uppfattning om trafiksituationer till sjöss

Abstract

There are a lot of situations at sea which are perceived as difficult to solve by officers. The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea contains the rules which deal with traffic situations at sea, but despite the regulations collisions occur. The study has focused on two questions: What situations are perceived as the most difficult by the navigating officers? How are these situations solved by the navigation officers? The study has been carried out by using in-depth interviews with five Swedish watchkeeping officers. The officers have been asked about which factors make a traffic situation difficult and has described how they perceive specific difficult situations. To interpret the results, the study has a background chapter which complements the interviews. The circumstances the officers’ addresses which make a situation difficult are factors they cannot influence. It can be space limitations, the number of vessels in the area or vessels which do not follow the rules. The specific situations contain one or more of these factors and the officers describe how they solved the situations in the interviews. Several of the specific situations are within a traffic separation scheme were the space is limited. AIS is used by the officers to create an overview of the situations and ARPA is used in a later stage to get the information needed to solve the situations. Using VHF to deviate from the rules and solve the situations in a different way is common, but this is something the officers in this study avoid.