Ferries used throughout much of the developing world are among the deadliest form of public transportation, as evidenced by the capsized ship in the Philippines last month in which nearly 800 people are feared dead.
Massive overcrowding and poor regulations often contribute to ferry accidents. In other cases, including the Philippine tragedy, weather appeared to play a key role.
Len Roueche, chief executive of the trade group Interferry, said that most of these accidents could be avoided.
“In virtually every [accident], there is an aspect of human error,” he said. “There may be mechanical or weather problems involved as well, but usually it’s the human-error response which causes those problems to compound.”
Most ferry accidents and deaths occur in poor countries of Southeast Asia such as Indonesia and the Philippines, which are heavily dependent on water transportation. Bangladesh in South Asia is another country prone to ferry accidents.
At least 845 people were aboard the MV Princess of the Stars ferry when it ran aground off Sibuyan in the central Philippines on June 21 during a typhoon. Only 56 people are known to have survived, Reuters news agency reported Tuesday.
Attempts to retrieve bodies from the ferry wreck have been suspended after the shipping company said the cargo included 10 tons of endosulfan, a toxic pesticide.
Because accident reports are often incomplete in the developing world, it is difficult to estimate the annual toll. But it may much higher than other forms of public transportation such as planes and trains, Interferry said.
Throughout the world roughly 1,200 people are killed every year in planes capable of carrying six passengers or more, according to the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office. Deaths from train accidents rarely exceed 1,000 per year.
Government officials in 2004 said that more than 20,000 ferries were in service in Bangladesh, but only 8,000 were registered with the government. Of those, only about 20 percent were certified as “fit to operate,” according to a report by the Partnership for Sustainable Ports.
The same report attributed overcrowding as a major danger of ferry travel, especially the storage of large amounts of cargo on the deck, which creates top-heavy imbalance and contributes to capsizing in rough weather.
Overcrowding does not appear to be a factor in the Philippine ferry disaster.
In an effort to curb these problems, Interferry began a joint initiative with the U.N. International Maritime Organization in 2006 with the goal of cutting ferry-related deaths by 90 percent in 10 years.
The organization’s current efforts in Bangladesh focus on weather forecasting and improving safety procedures.
Mr. Roueche said he thinks the efforts of Interferry are beginning to pay off in Bangladesh.
After the most recent ferry disaster in February, the Bangladeshi government immediately released a detailed accident report, something Mr. Roueche said is rarely seen from Bangladesh or other developing countries.
“The importance of an accident report is to find out the causes of the accident and make sure that information is known,” he said. “We have some ferry incidents in the United States, but they are studied very carefully and changes are made in the regulation and that definitely makes a difference. … Many of these countries have not gotten to this point yet.”
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