ACCIDENTS DURING MARINE TRANSPORT OF DANGEROUS GOODS - DISTRIBUTION OF FATALITIES

On the basis of 2781 accident case histories, the consequences measure d by the number of fatalities from marine accidents (n = 1780) during transport of dangerous goods have been investigated and compared with those from other transport modes (n = 1001). Accidents from marine tra nsport of dangerous goods have been found to have a larger proportion of accidents with fatalities in the range of 10-50 than other transpor t modes. Therefore, f/N curves for marine accidents are not similar to straight lines as usually seen but have a hump. This is probably due to the size of the potentially affected population, which is often in the range of 10-50 during marine transport, reflecting the number of c rew members on one or two vessels; further, the population potentially affected is placed in a limited area. Almost all accidents with more than 40 fatalities were collisions, and accidents with more than 100 f atalities were due to collisions between tankers and ferries, which si gnificantly increases the population at risk. In these accidents, the dangerous goods were oil. The high number of fatalities is not surpris ing, as oil at sea has the potential for surrounding a vessel and catc hing fire. Differences have been found for the distribution of fatalit ies between different local surroundings and transport phases. Similar ity has been found for the distribution of fatalities for type of carg o, tank type, geographical location and year of accident.