Risk Doesn't Just Concentrate in Your Fleet. It Concentrates on the Vessel.

Every fleet has vessels that seem to demand more attention than others. They generate more follow-up, more incident reviews, and more calls between the vessel and shore. Over time, fleet teams often develop an instinct for which ships require closer attention, even before the data fully explains why.

Maritime Safety 2026 puts numbers behind that experience. In the dataset analyzed for the report, roughly a third of vessels accounted for about 70% of reported accidents. Risk was clearly concentrated across the fleet, with a relatively small number of vessels responsible for a disproportionate share of incidents and the operational burden that followed.

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What is more interesting is that the concentration does not stop at the vessel level. Within those vessels, risk tends to gather around particular routines, working areas, and operations. Watchkeeping, mooring, gangway supervision, and PPE compliance can carry very different levels of exposure on the same ship. Understanding that second layer helps shore teams move beyond simply identifying a vessel as higher risk and begin to understand where its problems are actually developing.

Read the full Maritime Safety 2026 report

The fleet-level pattern, briefly

The clearest starting point is the concentration of accidents across the fleet. Roughly a third of vessels in the dataset accounted for about 70% of reported accidents, which means a relatively small group of ships generated most of the incident exposure.

The FleetVision score provides another view of the same pattern. Vessels scoring below 75 had an accident rate 5.7 times higher than vessels scoring above 85. That difference gives fleet teams a useful way to identify where closer attention may be warranted, while the underlying operational data begins to explain what is happening aboard those vessels.

Where the risk actually lives

When the data is examined in more detail, the differences between lower- and higher-performing vessels become concentrated around a relatively small number of activities.

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Unattended bridge conditions while underway occur 45 times more frequently on lower-scoring vessels than on top-scoring vessels, while mobile phone use on the bridge is 43 times more frequent. Unattended mooring conditions lasting more than six hours occur 40 times more frequently, unattended gangways 31 times more often, and PPE violations on deck 32 times more frequently. Snapback-zone exposure during mooring operations is 15 times higher.

Taken together, the numbers point to a recognizable pattern. Some of the largest differences in performance sit around watchkeeping, mooring, access control, and PPE compliance. These are routine parts of vessel operations, repeated every day, which means the exposure can accumulate long before it appears in an incident report.

Root-cause analysis supports the same conclusion. Approximately 95% of incidents in the dataset involved human behavior or procedure. Roughly four in ten involved non-compliance with an existing procedure, and during mooring and anchoring operations that figure rose to approximately six in ten. The underlying procedures often already existed. The challenge was seeing where execution was repeatedly breaking down during normal operations.

Explore the data behind these patterns in Maritime Safety 2026

What a lower-performing vessel actually looks like

A lower-performing vessel is usually defined by recurring patterns rather than one dramatic failure. Watchkeeping discipline may be inconsistent, officer presence during critical operations may vary, and deck supervision may have recurring gaps around gangways and high-risk working areas. Mooring operations can show repeated snapback exposure or periods of unattended activity, while PPE violations continue to appear during normal deck work.

Higher-performing vessels show greater consistency in these same areas. Bridge coverage is maintained more reliably, deck operations are supervised more closely, mooring practices generate fewer repeated deviations, and PPE compliance remains more stable over time.

The frequency of these observations is what makes them useful. A single deviation can have many explanations. When the same condition appears hundreds or thousands of times over the course of a year, it begins to describe the way that vessel is actually operating. That gives fleet teams a much clearer basis for deciding where support or intervention is needed.

Why this changes what attention means

Knowing which vessels carry the greatest risk is valuable, but it does not automatically tell a shore team what needs to change onboard. Two vessels with similar overall performance can have very different operating problems. One may be generating recurring bridge deviations while another has stronger watchkeeping and greater exposure around mooring or deck activity.

More detailed operational data makes that distinction visible. It allows fleet teams to identify the particular activity, area, or operating condition generating the exposure and then determine whether that pattern is becoming more or less frequent over time. The result is a more specific conversation with the vessel and a better basis for deciding where training, review, or additional support should be focused.

One example in the report makes this clear. A vessel generated approximately 150 bridge deviations over a three-month period, around 24 times the fleet benchmark. Nearly all of those deviations involved unattended bridge conditions during anchoring. Shore management reviewed the recurring pattern with the Master and bridge team, and within two months unattended bridge conditions had fallen to zero.

The value of the information was its specificity. The team could see the behavior, understand how frequently it was occurring, and measure whether the response had worked. What had previously been a general question about bridge discipline became a clearly defined operational issue that could be addressed with the people involved.

The practical takeaway

The data suggests that risk concentrates at more than one level. Across the fleet, a relatively small number of vessels account for a disproportionate share of accidents. Within those vessels, exposure becomes concentrated again around particular behaviors, working areas, and operations.

That distinction matters for shore teams because safety resources are always finite. Fleet-level information can help identify which vessels deserve closer attention, while more detailed operational information can show where that attention is likely to have the greatest effect.

The goal is greater precision in how risk is understood and addressed. When teams can see which patterns are recurring, where they occur, and whether they change after action is taken, they have a stronger opportunity to intervene before those conditions contribute to an incident.

Read the complete Maritime Safety 2026 report

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