ABSTRACT
The accidents are due to the failure of senior managers to realize that they could do more to prevent accidents. They are thus mainly due to lack of training, but some may be due to lack of ability and a few to a deliberate decision to give safety a low priority. These accidents are sometimes said to be due to organizational failures but organizations have no minds of their own. Someone has to change the culture of the organization and this needs the involvement, or at least the support, of senior people. Poor joint-making had been tolerated for a long time before the explosion because all sources of ignition had been eliminated and so leaks could not ignite, or so it was believed. In 1987 the cross-Channel roll-on/roll-off ferry Herald of Free Enterprise sank, with the loss of 186 passengers and crew, soon after leaving Zeebrugge in Belgium, en route for Dover.
