Re:AI Is About To Take The Ship's Helm Away From Humans
by robfitz on Thursday January 17, 2019 @04:08AM
(#18929401)
(I recently sailed through heavy shipping areas like the channel and Seine on a small sailboat.)
Assuming they can see you, the captain of a large boat will try to give way rather than squash you (they'd be _super_ angry about having to do so, though), but in practice they're already hugely under-crewed, so there's a large percentage of time when you (as a smaller boat) can't count on that. And even if they are actively looking out, small boats are just... hard to see. Almost all of the deaths in sailing come from a small boat's crew falling asleep without appropriate watch (you're meant to fully scan the horizon at least every 20 minutes) and getting run down by a big boat.
This is a long way of saying that big boats are already mostly automated, and I think everyone will be safer if we go all the way on it, along with more robust sensors, instead of just pretending that there's always someone doing a perfect lookout.
Assuming they can see you, the captain of a large boat will try to give way rather than squash you (they'd be _super_ angry about having to do so, though), but in practice they're already hugely under-crewed, so there's a large percentage of time when you (as a smaller boat) can't count on that. And even if they are actively looking out, small boats are just... hard to see. Almost all of the deaths in sailing come from a small boat's crew falling asleep without appropriate watch (you're meant to fully scan the horizon at least every 20 minutes) and getting run down by a big boat.
This is a long way of saying that big boats are already mostly automated, and I think everyone will be safer if we go all the way on it, along with more robust sensors, instead of just pretending that there's always someone doing a perfect lookout.