ABSTRACT
Safety of ships at sea is one of the main concerns of all the parties involved with maritime industries – ship designers, shipbuilders and ship owners, and all of them want to avoid serious outcomes of ship accidents leading to the enormous penalties, in terms of lives lost, damage to the environment and to cargo. Therefore, last 40 years more attention is given to the design and building activities, to the operation of the ships and the education and training of the ship operators. Riskbased methods are nowadays introduced in ship design process to provide rational basis for making decisions regarding new design concepts and regulating different operational aspects (Downes et al. 2007). One aspect that cannot be avoided in the risk assessment is the probability of occurrence of the accidental damage. Such probabilities of different accidents are mostly obtained from statistics of historical data of ship incidents. This is the main purpose of the present study, i.e. to provide necessary input data for risk assessment of the maritime transportation. In particular, the paper deals with accident statistics of the events that could precede to the ship capsizing or ultimate hull girder failure of the ship, being the most unfavorable outcome of the marine accident.
