
Technology fails? USS Porter crashes with Oil Tanker - ColinWright
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/uss-porter-crash-oil-tanker_n_1770096.html
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ColinWright
I've submitted this as a complement to the item here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4375476>

There the question is reasonably asked:

    
    
        ... how this could happen with all the modern tech
        and backup systems?
    

I answered at length here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4375513>

Quoting that:

Easily.

Modern UAIS systems, designed to help prevent collision at sea, are often
turned off in politically "difficult" areas because they transmit the ship's
position, velocity (speed and course-over-ground), what they're carrying, and
where they're going. Ideal for pirates.

Modern ship radar systems are ARPA's - Automatic Radar Plotting Aids - and
they only track vessels if you ask them to, they don't automatically identify
and track potential collision threats.

Avoiding collisions comes down to someone actually looking out the window, and
someone (possibly, but not necessarily, the same someone) watching the radar
for potential threats, and taking the action of deciding to track them.

 _Really_ modern radar system, like the ones I've been working on for the past
20 years, aren't cleared to run ships because they haven't been "type
certified," which means that they aren't "hardened" and then tested in the
active marine environment.

If this happened in an area watched by one of our systems, alarms would have
been sounding for around 15 minutes before the actual collision, enough time
to take appropriate action.

The problems with getting these "really modern" systems onto ships are
multiple. Your coding standards for desktop or web applications just don't
apply, you need something more akin to the coding for space travel. There will
often be no one on board capable of diagnosing problems, or even identifying
if it's misbehaving. As a result it has to work perfectly, all the time,
without maintenance, without attention. Such software is expensive, especially
since it's safety critical, and subject to SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea)
regulations.

Net result is it's really, really expensive, and margins in shipping are so
tight, no ship owner will install a system when instead, they have to have
people on watch who are supposed to accomplish the same tasks.

