I've posted in another thread about a parallel problem in commercial aviation. People have become used to automatic systems doing the "thinking", and planes have been flown into the ground or a vertical stall due to a relatively minor error in an automatic system. In an older, less "advanced" era, many of these crashes probably would have been avoided by a competent pilot.
There's also the problem of data "smog". With a blizzard of information coming at you, it can be easy for a critical piece of information (esp. one that the system hasn't been programmed to escalate appropriately) to be obscured.
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Rgds, D.
I don't think bugs in the navigation software is the problem with this incident. I have never read of a navigation incident were a bug in the software caused an incident. However, there are plenty of incidents were the misuse of the software did cause collisions and resulted in deaths.
One of the problems with this technology, and especially GPS, is that people are trained by just using the equipment to think that what is on the chart plotter is accurate to some huge degree of precision. Now, the GPS might be accurate, but the CHART used to show the position of the vessel maybe off by miles. One of the charts used the USN minesweeper that ran aground in the PI was off but almost 8 nautical miles! This is why one should use charts from different sources and hopefully running on different redundant systems.
An around the world race sail boat ran aground in the Indian Ocean a year or so ago even though they had the best charts and equipment available. On these racing boats, unlike other crew members, the navigators only duty is to navigate and I think worry about weather. The navigator simply did not zoom down into the electronic chart to see if there were any islands or reefs along their course.
Their sail boat ran into a reef at a good rate of speed. :confused3: Thankfully, no body was killed and the boat was eventually hauled off the reef an repaired.
There was likely a similar incident where a couple were cruising north in the Caribbean sea. The set a course on the autopilot and eventually ran into an island. They both died. The best guess is that they set the course but did not zoom down into the chart to see the island in their path.
Another guy was sailing solo and set the auto pilot way point off an island. The auto pilot sound an alarm when the vessel came to the way point but the captain was asleep and slept through the alarm. He woke up when the boat hit the island.
I know of more incidents but I think those make the point that while the technology is fairly robust, there are limitations that need to be understood. In the DDG incident, I have not seen the AIS tracks for other vessels in the area at the time of the collision. There had to be many, many more and may have played a role in the incident. In any case, the crew has to be ready and able to handle the vessel if these fancy dancy navigation system fail. This is one reason one should have at least two separate navigation systems. The boat we were on last year in Scotland and Ireland had two such systems, one a PC that ran the chart plotter along with other shipboard systems and the other chart plotter was an Android tablet with its own GPS. This was a good thing because the PC was running Windows, and while going up a twisty river, the PC did a Blue Screen of Death. :shocked:
Now, it was daylight and one just had to use the Mark I Eyeball and the reboot was not a big deal. Just a PITA since the chart plotter was simply providing us with information on what was around the next bend. The Irish and Vikings had been sailing up that river for centuries without fancy dancy systems so we should be able to manage and did.
But that BSOD could very well have distracted someone like enough to go aground. One has to know when to ignore some problems and focus on what is important. :laughing:
Being overloaded with information in heavily traveled areas is a real concern. One way to deal with this is following the traffic separation zones in heavily traveled areas. I have not heard if the DDG was in one of these areas much less if it, or the cargo ship, were in one of the shipping lanes. Being overloaded with information could very well overwhelmed a bridge crew on cargo vessels which are lightly manned. USN ships are usually not in that situation though I wonder about the LCS's which have small crews by design.
