Accident Rate of Russian Vessels Lower than World Average

The accident rate of Russian vessels is lower than the world average according to General Director of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping Nikolai Reshetov who spoke at the press conference of the fifth international seminar on the problems of substandard navigation, which opened yesterday in Saint Petersburg.

Reshetov said that in 2001 the number of delayed vessels under the supervision of the Russian Maritime Register of Shipping was one of the lowest. Only those vessels under the supervision of the French bureau Veritas and the German bureau Lloyd had less delays. Recently, however, there has been an increase worldwide in the number of accidents, which has been caused by the high number of vessels as well as by human error. The annual increase of accidents per vessel is about 0.3%.

Nikolai Reshetov added that at the present time, according to the European Commission, about 10% of the world's vessels are considered to be below standard (according to the standards of international conventions). The transport department of the European Commission is considering ways of penalizing those countries with such vessels. It is also being discussed whether substandard vessels ought to be prohibited from entering the ports of civilised countries.