Or, take an example from accidents under protection and 

 Indemnity insurance. Hand injuries axe most frequent and severe 

 in New England and second most frequent in California. ^■Jhat or 

 vho is responsible for such accidents? Is defective equipment 

 the cause of it, or lack of adequate safety devices, inadequate 

 first aid supplies, weather conditions, or the frequently 

 slippery deck of the fishing boat? Assvmiing that all or most 

 of these conditions existed at the time of the accident, could 

 not the hand injury have been avoided if the injured crewman 

 were more skillful in handling fishing equipment on board, more 

 accident conscious, and careful or sober while working? 'Who or 

 what is to be blamed may be of little importance insofar as 

 establishing the owner's liability is concerned. But discovering 

 the real causes which lie behind accidents is always importajit 

 for their prevention. 



On the other hand, our inquiry is aimed at discovering general 

 conditions or situations which are associated with the reciirrence 

 of types of accidents, rather than pin pointing the specific cause 

 or causes of one specific accident. Association of conditions or 

 situations with accident recurrence may not always imply a causal 

 relationship. This limitation, however, is an iinimportant obstacle 

 in the attempt to discover trends or tendencies which may become 

 the basis for recommending certedn accident-prevention measures. 

 For the purpose at hand, the sample data, the long experience of 

 marine surveyors, reports from insurers, the experiences of vessel 

 owners, and the reports of field work supervisors were utilized. 



2. Physical, characteristics of vessels and occurrence of 

 accidents . This survey did not include physical inspection of 

 vessels and the owner's response may not always be reliable on 

 matters which may question the seaworthiness of the vessel and 

 the adequacy of safety standards on board. If we consider "don't 

 know" as a negative answer, only about 25 percent of insured 

 vessels in New England and Gulf Area were built or classified 

 under the rules of the American Bureau of Shipping or other 

 classification society. In California, about i)-8 percent of 

 Insured vessels belonged to this category (table A-l4 in Appendix 

 A). The average age of insured vessels in the sample was I9.8 

 years in New England, 11.2 in the Gulf Area, and l4.5 in California 

 (table A- 1^4- in Appendix A). Surveyor's reports indicate that great 

 differences exist in the quality of construction and in vessel 

 stability. Better standards of vessel construction, which may 

 guarantee greater safety in navigation, seem to be sacrificed 

 presumably to facilitate fishing operations. One undervriter 

 in California attributes part of his total losses to the fact 

 that "larger boats with tanks for fuel, bait, and fish have little 

 free board and poor stability with the result that when they take 

 on water they quickly go under" . 



75 



