The problem was complacency --that may be somewhat forgivable on the freighter's side, but not on the destroyer's side --it's a warship. It should always be on alert and at the ready. They should never be complacent. The captain allowed his sailors to become complacent.

I am hopeful the navy will not only examine this crew but will also examine the rest of the navy for laxness and failure to perform/dereliction of duties, etc.

I don't think it has to be the actual captain of the ship who could not, of course, be at the helm 24 hours per day. If this was indeed a manifestation of what is described in the book I refer to it could be anyone in command of the ship who has been led to believe that their ships size and/or status gives them universal right of way.

As the article points out, the one explanation that matches the tracks and observations is that everyone was asleep and the two ships were on autopilot.

And it is considered "impossible" by many that discipline on a Navy ship would have broken down so much that the entire watch conspired to ignore and not report their fellow sailors dereliction of duty.

As a result 'well understood' is not a good description of this event :-)

I have come across ships at sea where the bridge crew were clearly asleep - I think that's a much more likely scenario.

I encourage you to read the book - it makes the case that among very large ships there is indeed such a culture.

My personal experience as a sailor in the US Navy neither bolsters nor diminishes what is described in the book but I do believe that a culture of machismo and egomania can permeate the ranks.

Just because it was the officer in charge and not the actual (sleeping) captain might not make much difference.

I spent years at sea as an Officer of the Watch in the Royal Navy - during that time I spoke to quite a few other watchkeepers from around the world. The attitude I encountered was always one of terror of getting it wrong rather than machismo.

I can see how in ambiguous scenarios with large cargo vessels this could lead to a collision. In a relatively nimble destroyer I'm very confident this wasn't a simple case of "I'm the stand on vessel, I won't move."

The Wikipedia page includes "almost all serious nuclear accidents have occurred with what was at the time the most recent technology". Chernobyl was trying out a new cooling method, but it wasn't a very new reactor. Fukushima wasn't very new either. However, the book was written before both nuclear disasters.

I do think there is a social sciences aspect to the risk of nuclear energy. People who know enough to minimize risks are afraid enough of others' over-reactions to transparency about flaws and mistakes that there is an incentive to cover things up when they could be fixed. The other problem is that Chernobyl and Fukushima are talked about as the worst a nuclear disaster can be, when their impact was greatly contained by heroic efforts of individuals

Prof. Nancy Leveson of MIT has done extensive research over the last forty years on the safety engineering of complex systems, and her 2012 book _Engineering a Safer World_[0] (open-access PDF at that link) is partly a response to Perrow's _Normal Accidents_.

[0]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-world

In particular, and unlike Perrow, she thinks we really can design complex sociotechnical systems which aren't disasters waiting to happen, and her book provides a theoretical framework for doing so, plus a fully-worked design analysis technique and accident investigation technique using that framework. These have been and are being used under real-world conditions in a variety of industries including transportation, the military, and even software.

There's a conference every year at MIT which I've been going to every year for about four years now where folks present. Every year there are more industries and disciplines represented, and there have also been presentations of analysis techniques applying the theoretical framework in practical contexts like cybersecurity and privacy.

You're also very right that there are huge social and human factors components to safety, and her book talks a lot about getting that right and analyzing what went wrong at various levels of abstraction, including cultural and regulatory. I highly recommend it, if you're interested in this subject.

Based on what I know of the US Navy, I'm certain that the accident investigators working on this collision are doing so informed by this methodology.

That's pure speculation on your part, not an actual account or understanding of what caused this particular accident.

Additionally, the destroyer was hit around the middle of the right side while the cargo ship hit head-on.

But it takes a lot of things to wrong for this to happen.

(It's the same on the road; you have to take it as an article of faith that other people will respect your right of way, but at the same time, it makes sense not to go past junctions with waiting cars too quickly, just in case they don't see you. If you get hit, it might not be your fault, but that's little consolation if you're injured or killed.)

Of course, the rules do also say that both ships are responsible for avoiding collisions with the other, and that both are free to maneuver to avoid collision if they are put in extremis by failure to follow the navigation rules.

Unless everyone on both ships was asleep, this statement doesn't have to be true. If anything, it seems eminently plausible the destroyer's crew was playing chicken with the freighter thinking they were playing against a human opponent, when in fact they were dealing with an automated system.

And standing orders were to wake the captain whenever another ship gets within a minimum distance. So the watch had to not only decide to play chicken with the freighter, but not wake the captain when it breached minimum safe distance.

Interesting you should mention this because, IIRC, the book has an aside about ships that (unknowingly) play chicken with lighthouses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_ur...

It is true that many COs will try to time their periods of sleep for when the operational tempo is lower as a risk management measure. I can only assume the Fitzgerald's CO had made his risk assessment and figured that it was better to sleep at night than to sleep during the day when the contact density would be even higher.

But for a Navy warship being "approached by other ships" is a fact of life for every hour of every day, you can't always plan your sleep schedule for when you're the only boat on the pond.

But this still relies on the watch team detecting the contact and realizing that it will pass near to the ship, and so again the ship's captain is back to relying on his or her watch team to at least get to that minimal level of competence -- because if they can't rely on the officers on watch to be able to wake them up properly, we're back to captains who can never sleep.