Ferry crashed because driver not taught how to steer
Ferry crashed because driver not taught how to steer
A single command sent the ship on a course the crew didn't know how to stop.
...more or less.
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That's quite the editorialised title 😆. But not far off.
The grounding of the ferry Aratere began with a "turn execute" command being pushed 36 seconds late, sending the ship's autopilot onto a course crew didn't know how to stop, a preliminary report has found.
The report showed the crew did not know how to take back control from the autopilot, and it took about two minutes before the ship was brought back under manual control.
It says it was a new steering system installed 3 weeks earlier. A bit crazy that hitting a button 30 seconds late caused a course that when undone in 2 minutes still wasn't able to prevent a grounding even with engines put into reverse as soon as they could.
That system sounds like a bit of a nightmare to use. And worse to turn off.
Maybe we don't know everything yet & thats just employees and/or company covering for themselves.
Seafolk likes to talk about mermaids & evil sentient autopilots.Tho not having 3 minutes of buffer at the start of the journey/when hitting autopilot sounds wild.
Unless this was autopilot for the port, but the pic doesn't seem like it.Also, I was under the impression that any autopilots from the least 50 years were dynamic (ie at least manoeuvering between gps locations, not holding fixed azimuths for certain periods of time), but I don't actually know much about big ships.
Edit:
The vid explains it, they were already at speed (13kn) and along the shoreline when the unclear new system caused the ship to steer into land (bcs software otherwise has no issues with traveling over land, wtf).
They completed the same journey with the new system 80+ times but I understand how they didn't know the 'execute' confirmation of autopilots actions (thats necessary, like with train conductors) can skip waypoints like that depending on location.
And yes, anther fuck in this clusterfuck was the two minutes of figuring out what's happening & trying to get the controls back.
If you turn that hard into land I imagine it pretty hard to save/stop the ship before beaching.
The thing is, 'the bridge team did not know that to take back control they needed to hold the button for 5 seconds' ...
(Sounds like they weren't power users or gamers ... 3 people trying to figure out how to press their takeover buttons)After that it took 40s for engines to reverse (because they are big fans) and the bow thrusters to come on.
The ship was only very slightly damaged (that bulb only, basically could sail onwards, but they prob decided it's better to check everything before doing so as they were in a safe position to do so).
They only needed two tugs to pull it back, then it sailed to powder it's bulbous nose.
No injuries.Ah this makes more sense. Thanks for watching the video for us! Can we just sail straight to Blenheim and avoid all that sailing close to land, instead of navigating the sounds...
There's been so many proposals to do that, and they've never managed to get into proper planning phases before getting canned for one reason or another.
Yeah I know. But the current route just seems dumb.
This is a really good write up of the last time the Clifford Bay plan was canned; includes a map of the route and a summary of the economies of it all.
And in the comments section this popped out from someone - which with the benefit of hindsight we can see was not true in the long-term.
3. The supposed costs of “upgrading” Picton were massively over stated and were in fact only actually 50% of the supposed cast in stone costs given by some consultancy company in 2012, so Picton is actually the cheaper option.
Yeah, I also see in the comments some disapproval at the freight industry not wanting to pay, claiming they get the benefits.
I disagree with that assessment. The freight companies don't get the benefit of shorter routes, what they get is competition forcing prices down on those routes because costs have dropped. The economic benefits aren't to the freight companies, it is a wider economic benefit of cheaper freight and more efficient transfer of freight that is spread across many companies and individuals. Hence why it doesn't make sense for freight companies to pay for, but does make sense for a government to invest in.
Well, given the road freight companies pay a fraction of the true cost of the wear and tear they cause on the roads, and the elevated cost of building roads that can safely cope with how large National let trucks get in 2014, they do get benefits that other forms of transport don't. But yeah if the point is to unlock regional economic gains then it should be paid for as a public service.
The road wear and tear problem seems to be solvable through RUC. You'd probably destroy the transport system doing it overnight. Perhaps it would be a good start to calculate accurate costs and set the RUC rates at those actual cost rates, then apply a discount to get close to current rates. This makes it more visible, and over time you can reduce the discount while also working on building alternate infrastructure.
Personally i'd go back to the future a bit and look at reverting the 2014 changes to reduce weight and thus damage. I would also start providing a similar amount of subsidy to coastal shipping as road freight gets and build the coastal network back up. I'm a huge fan of rail freight, and would like to see it used more as well but most of the existing infrastructure around that is ok for now.
With a strong coastal and rail freight networks we can then start putting restrictions on road freight distances again - with a carve out for time critical / refrigerated going to either domestic market or air freight routes.
If we can reduce the speed & weight of trucks, plus the amount of them and the distance travelled then in theory (to a pleb) our roads aren't as expensive to build, and don't suffer as much pot-hole damage so the maintenance costs are reduced. For mine, the National Party's all in on road just sets us up for huge ongoing cost maintaining ever bigger and more expensive roads, with a huge emissions cost compounding the whole problem.
Oh I don't disagree at all, but the problem is the National Party scupper any public investment in these services, eg:
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/interisland-ferries-to-stick-with-picton/POXPKGCRWSTJ6HAOXGNQKJG3YI/
Tell me it wasn't made by Boeing pls