April
2009No, make that *five* accidents
Excess of alcohol legislation contributes to four accidents
Suunto takes over Tacktick
Chinese satellite sparks diplomatic tiff
Norway joins Galileo consortium
New GPS frequency
EC takes over EGNOS
Excess of alcohol legislation contributes to four ... No, make that *five* accidents
Hard on the heels of the latest Safety Digest comes a Preliminary Investigation report from the MAIB, which seems to say that there's is nothing wrong with setting out in a small, overloaded boat, at night and in fog, so long as you haven’t been drinking.
That, at least, seems to be the conclusion reached by the men from the ministry in its “Preliminary Investigation” into the deaths of four men who died while trying to cross a Scottish loch in a small open boat, in thick fog and in the early hours of the morning.
The report is based on so little factual information that the boat is quoted as being “between 2.7m and 3.7m”, and of “unknown” construction. It even admits that “There is not enough information to be certain what caused this accident. It is likely that the boat was relatively small and that it was overloaded by carrying four passengers, an outboard engine and a fuel tank. Navigating the boat back across the Loch would have been extremely difficult in the thick fog.”
But none of this is identified as the cause of the accident. Instead, the report highlights the fact that the men had spent “some time in the pub”, and draws the conclusion that “this case emphasises the increased risks of attempting to operate a boat under the influence of alcohol”.
Excess of alcohol legislation contributes to four accidents
After keeping its neck wound in for a couple of years, the MAIB is once more getting up to its old tricks, conjuring up four “alcohol related incidents” for its latest “Safety Digest”. The fact that the MAIB is part of the Department for Transport, which happens to be in the middle of yet another “consultation” intended to justify the introduction of drink-boat legislation is, of course, coincidence. It would be cynical to suggest otherwise.
OK, so I’m cynical. But let’s look at the facts.
Case one concerns a boat without lights, that was approaching a slipway at night and at speed when it ran into a police launch (literally!). Apparently, “the two policemen on board the police boat established that the driver had consumed an excessive amount of alcohol”. Surprisingly, though, there’s no mention of them backing this up with a breath test, nor of a prosecution under the existing legislation or harbour bye-laws.
Case two concerns two sailors, heading back to their boat after an evening in the local pub. Their bodies, and their dinghy were found the following morning. If alcohol and boats were really such a deadly combination as we are sometimes led to expect, this kind of accident would be commonplace. But of course, it isn’t. And the proposed new legislation wouldn’t make any difference anyway, because most yacht tenders are too small and too slow to be covered.
Case three concerns a RIB which hit a breakwater, at speed and at night, with six people on board, none of whom were wearing lifejackets. Witnesses had apparently reported that “several of those on board were drunk”, and that they had “ignored police advice not to head out to sea”. Surprisingly, though, it again seems that the police chose not to invoke the existing regulations or bye-laws. Operating an open boat at high speed, at night, with no lights and no lifejackets is hardly the behaviour of a towering intellect. But the possibility that driving into a breakwater might be down to stupidity rather than to alcohol doesn’t seem to have been considered.
And then there’s case four, in which a speedboat hit a buoy – again at night. All seven of those on board were taken to hospital, where they were treated for hypothermia. Again, despite the fact that they were in an ideal place for taking blood tests that might have supported a prosecution under existing laws and bye laws, there is no mention of any such evidence – just the reported comments of witnesses who “remarked on the fact that the adults appeared intoxicated”.
Funnily enough, the NHS website describes the symptoms of hypothermia as including “loss of judgement and reasoning, difficulty moving around or stumbling, fumbling hands, drowsiness, and slurred speech”, to which the St John’s First Aid manual adds ”irrational behavior, occasionally belligerence”. Now what, I wonder, might witnesses have made of those symptoms?
Suunto takes over Tacktick
Finnish compass-maker Suunto has taken over Tacktick – the Emsworth-based company that has carved a unique niche for itself by producing solar-powered wireless instruments that find a place on almost every kind of boat from racing dinghies to blue-water cruisers.
In the kind of corporate gobbledegook that transcends national boundaries, Suunto President Juha Pinomaa is quoted as saying “We plan to utilise distribution synergies between Suunto and Tacktick to strengthen our presence in the marine market. The combined strength of Suunto and Tacktick’s technologies will accelerate the development of new innovative marine applications while also offering possibilities to expand the solar power technologies to other areas of sports electronics within Suunto and Amer Sports Group”.
The best news is that the jobs of the fourteen TackTick staff seem to be safe, and that this successful little business is staying in its home town, to carry on making its distinctive products.
Chinese satellite sparks diplomatic tiff
China took another step towards setting up its own GPS-like navigation system on 14 April, when it launched the second satellite of its new Beidou 2/Compass constellation.
Compared with the sluggish progress of Galileo, the Chinese have set themselves the ambitious target of launching another ten satellites this year, achieving 24/7 coverage of the whole of China by 2011, and achieving a constellation of thirty satellites to give global coverage by 2015 -2020 (depending which “official” statement you believe!), with accuracy in the order of 10m and with a two-way text-messaging facility.
The launch was surrounded by what some sources are describing as a diplomatic “row” concerning the frequencies to be used by the new system, which – they say – have been chosen deliberately to interfere with Galileo. A particularly bizarre report in the Sunday Torygraph (and see "Is he a Eurosceptic" ) even goes so far as to suggest that the Chinese satellite somehow “stakes a claim” to the frequencies that the prototype Galileo satellites have been transmitting on for the past three years!
Norway joins Galileo consortium
The Norwegian government has promised to chip in nearly 70 million Euros towards the development Galileo satellite navigation system.
The project has been seriously delayed by internal wrangles over funding, so this latest contribution from a non-EU country could be far more significant than its face value – just 2% of the total project cost – might suggest.
Photo copyright Erik A. Drabløs
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/
New GPS frequency
April 10 saw the first GPS transmission on 1.17645GHZ – the so-called L5 frequency that will eventually become the system’s third civilian frequency. The successful transmission effectively “reserves” the frequency for future GPS satellites, and opens the door to enhanced accuracy and reliability, as well as to the possibility of adding a communications function to the GPS package.
Users don’t need to do anything about the new frequency, because existing receivers can’t use it and won’t be affected.
Photo: The launch of GPS IIR 20 -- the first to transmit on the third civilian frequency. Courtesy USAF
01 April: EC takes over EGNOS
The European Community became the official owner of EGNOS (the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) on April 1.
To many people, this may come as something of a surprise, because I think most of us thought the EC already did own it. But no, it seems that the EC has just been paying for it, and that ownership rested, instead, with the European Space Agency – a completely separate and rather smaller international club, with just eighteen member states, compared with the twenty seven that make up the EC.
One wonders, though, whether the EC knows exactly what it has become the owner of, because the press release announcing the acquisition describes EGNOS as being “the precursor of Galileo, the global navigation satellite system that the European Union is developing.”
In fact, the only connection between EGNOS and Galileo is that they both involve satellites. EGNOS is the European counterpart to the American WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System): like WAAS, it is designed to enhance the accuracy and reliability of GPS.
image: ESA