I have looked at a bunch of facts from the Marine Department website. Did you know that in 2011 there where over 200 collisions of commercial traffic outside of the Typhoon shelters? 40% of them involved passenger ferries. That is almost 2x week!
Over the last several years there have been critical injuries, at least one death I found, and several accidents that injured over 100 people. One of them 132 injuries.
In 2003 the MARDEP commissioned a report on traffic analysis and accident prevention. They predicted there would be fewer accidents involving larger ships and therefore more damage. A trend proving true. And they do nearly NOTHING about it!
The ferries are operated in a reckless and negligent manner and the MARDEP is complicit in that!
Without huge changes the next fatality is just around the corner. It's like predicting an earthquake. We know the places at greatest risk, but you can't predict exactly WHEN.
And the ferries here are NOT safe. The incident that Tavis is talking about should never happen, and if it does both the skipper should have severe punishments, but they won't and that is the reason why the ferries here are so dangerous,
The boats that have the most collisions are the Pearl River Delta cargo vessels. Add that to the fact that the ferries have collisions 2x week and I can tell you that it is only a matter of time before a bigger ferry is sunk by one of these (large) Delta ships with a massive loss of life. The Macau ferries are at grave risk due to their high speed coupled with large size (= high energy collision) and they have already had many several accidents.
The only question is if it is next week, next month, next year, 5 years, or this evening!
You read it here first!
BTW, Ferries HAVE collided with much larger Pearl River cargo vessels, one ferry even rammed a container ship before.
These are not normal occurrences in crowded harbours in the first world.
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