Over the last decade, the shipping industry has implemented a number of measures aimed at improving
its safety level (such as new regulations or new forms of team training). Despite this evolution, shipping
accidents, and particularly collisions, remain a major concern. This paper presents a modified version of
the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System, which has been adapted to the maritime context
and used to analyse human and organisational factors in collisions reported by the Marine Accident and
Investigation Branch (UK) and the Transportation Safety Board (Canada).
The analysis shows that most collisions are due to decision errors. At the precondition level, it highlights
the importance of the following factors: poor visibility and misuse of instruments (environmental
factors), loss of situation awareness or deficit of attention (conditions of operators), deficits in intership
communications or Bridge Resource Management (personnel factors). At the leadership level, the
analysis reveals the frequent planning of inappropriate operations and non-compliance with the Safety
Management System (SMS). The Multiple Accident Analysis provides an important finding concerning
three classes of accidents. Inter-ship communications problems and Bridge Resource Management defi-
ciencies are closely linked to collisions occurring in restricted waters and involving pilot-carrying vessels.
Another class of collisions is associated with situations of poor visibility, in open sea, and shows deficiencies
at every level ofthe socio-technical system(technical environment, conditionof operators,leadership
level, and organisational level). The third class is characterised by non-compliance with the SMS.
This study shows the importance of Bridge Resource Management for situations of navigation with
a pilot on board in restricted waters. It also points out the necessity to investigate, for situations of
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