As with anything else, improper maintenance and lack of awareness of safety demands will make Rigid Inflatable Boats, RIBs, hazardous workhorses. After investigations into a couple of accident and reviewing the data, Maritime New Zealand has issued a safety bulletin hightlighting the causes of the accident and recommendations for avoiding them.
MNZ describes RIBs as “robust, but not invincible”, something worth remembering as you bounce across the waves.
Here’s the safety bulletin:
Mugwop: Never found
Rigid inflatable Boats, RIBs, often seem to give users a false sense of security and complacency. It is a dangerous attitude, as the loss of two crew, untrained in handling a RIB just hours after another passenger had suffered head injuries.
New Zealand’s Transport Accident Investigation Commission renetly published its findings into the fatality. It makes uncomfortable reading. Continue reading »
Reconstruction showing location of injured person and other passengers at the time of accident
MAIB’s report on back injuries sustained by a passenger in a RIB ferrying workers to a jack-up rig on the Thames is relevant to anyone riding or operating these boats. A safety flyer has been issued with the report.
Passengers in small high-speed craft are subject to potentially high shock and vibration impacts, and MAIB is aware of 12 other accidents that have occurred in the 2 years following the similar Celtic Pioneer accident in August 2008, which also
resulted in lower back compression fractures.
The risk of this type of injury can be reduced by ensuring that:
• occupants are seated in appropriate seating
• the boat’s helmsman has received suitable training
• the boat is appropriately designed and outfitted
• procedures are in place to exclude passengers who may be particularly at risk,
based on medical grounds.
Here is the MAIB summary:
El Diablo gave a devilish ride
Sweden’s Transport Safety Board has called for national regulations to require fast small boats to have suspension seats following a report on a passenger who suffered back injuries.
Although not explicit in the report there may also be an issue regarding passenger safety training.
Says the report: “At the place of embarkation there was a general murmur of people speaking and music playing in the background which made it difficult, if not impossible, to hear the safety briefing for those in the group standing in the rear; one of them was the passenger who was later injured.
“Two or three laminated safety notes were handed over to the group for reading during the safety briefing and the later injured passenger had just a glance at it.