First amusing comment by a TV newsie. "The ferry is parked." Right. Anyone knows that vessels are docked, not parked.
The ferry crashed into its dock, hard enough to bash a big hole in the bow and injure a lot of passengers who were standing up to disembark. The ferry probably isn't as well equipped with grab irons as a subway car is.
A likely cause of such an accident is failure of the engines to provide reverse power. The vessel approaches the dock at a fair rate of speed and the skipper depends upon reverse thrust from the engines to slow her down. If the engines stall, fail, or refuse to go into reverse, the vessel will crash into the dock. Our ever clue-full (or is is low information) newsies have not asked anyone if the engines were working and providing reverse power.
2 comments:
There were 326 passengers on the ferry at the time of the accident, and many people were standing near the exit when the impact occurred. While it is unclear what caused the ferry accident -- the crews passed Breathalyzer tests -- this particular ferry had been involved in previous docking crashes. A good number of us place confidence in common carriers - buses, light rail, subways, and ferries - to get to work. It's not news that these modes of transportation are equally capable of incident, we hear about bus, train, subway, and ferry accidents happening all the time. But, the peace of mind we get as passengers on these common carriers is that we don’t have to worry about the trip - we trust that the people operating these buses, subways, trains, and ferries will keep us safe.
I don't know if I would phrase it quite that way. I am aware that the common carriers can do accidents as bad as anyone else. On the other hand I don't worry about it much. Overall they have pretty good safety records, better than driving. Once I get on board I read my paper or watch the scenery go by and don't worry about crashes. It's not that I have all that much trust in the carrier's workers, it's just that I know they don't crash all that often.
Incidentally it's been better than a week and not a peep on the TV news about a cause of the accident.
Post a Comment