Key among the issues you correctly pinpoint is minimum standards. I would add competency. Pilots and masters are well-trained and have certificates to prove it. Those certificates, however, do not ensure competency in the workplace, which is the only place ompetency can be assessed. There is reluctance to implement competency assurance systems throughout much of the maritime industry.

Training attitudes need to be changed. The usual attitude is “I'll complete this course to get my certificate”, not “I'm learning something to make my work safer”. Once training is complete the principles all to often aren't put into practice, inlcuding, in many cases, bridge team management.

In the off-shore industry it is standard practice to stop a job when conditions are unsafe. It doesn't take a management decision – you see something wrong and you stop the job, whoever you are. In theory the same can be done aboard ship but in practice it rarely happens. This is something that should be included in seafarer training: impressing upon them the right and responsibility to stop a task that cannot be carried out safely under the circumstances.

One of the reasons you won't see the bright sparks or sparks who changed an entire ship's crew, bottom to top, on trial is that, except for certain instances, company executives cannot be sued etc. or found criminally liable for decisions made on behalf of the company. This is in distinction to what I believe are the only two exceptions: newspaper and magazines editors, who can, for instance, be sued personally for any libel that appears in their publications, and ships masters.

It is ridiculous to expect an entire ship's crew to be fully functioning as a team in just two weeks, but it isn't necessarily a criminal act.

In the case of the Cosco Busan, charges have been filed against Fleet Management. Recently in the UK a shipowner was fined following a vessel's collision with the East Goodwin Lightship because it's manning levels were too low to ensure that an adequate watch could be maintained.

This indicates a promising trend, if it reduces the number of seafarers being criminalised following accidents. Shipowners and manning agents should be held liable when their practices result in shipboard personnel not reaching required levels of competency or requiring them to use unsafe practices.

You remark “The best we can do is extend the concept of BRM to broader ship management”. That hits the nail on the head. Repeatedly, investigation of accidents demonstrates systemic issues that spread from ship to shore. Shore-based safety culture, or lack of it, influences the
safety culture of the vessel.

Unfortunately, thanks to badly thought-out responses, the regulatory solutions are almost certain to prove inefficient and impractical. It should be noted that the VTS equipment in San Francisco was obsolete, thanks to budgetary constraints. That was partially a result of the so-called 'war on terrorism', which is diverting resources from maritime safety issues.