7:00 ferry to Central came oh sooo close to hitting the cargo boat to Sai Ying Pun this morning. A moment after pulling away from the pier we suddenly decelerated and then the cargo boat slid past us from behind on the port side. It was very very close - surely only a few inches apart.

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

There are near misses every day, it's quite scary to be honest, can't wait for my rental to finish so I can move and not have to risk my life every day taking the ferry to and from Lamma

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Sabe 1

Life is risky ...

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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

yeah nothing is interesting or remarkable

It was a little scary seeing that large cargo boat skim by us so closely as we were still slowing down. I'm telling you, if there'd been barnacles on the hull they'd have been scraped off!!! I wish I'd had the presence of mind to get my camera out and take a video to prove it to you.

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

It's not like we don't believe you, but these things really do happen every day. On Thursday the ferry was close to hitting DB's ferry after a clumsy move when reversing from the pier in Central.

However, I have yet to see any stats that would show that ferries are more dangerous than buses, especially in such a safe place that Hong Kong is.

I say I'm more likely to win enough money in Macau to buy my own ferry than to die or get injured in a ferry crash.

This wasn't an "every day" occurrence.

Considering that there has never been an actual collision I can recall, except for Lamma IV, and in that no one on the HKKF ferry was injured, I think that they remain very safe, statistically. Comparing with the hundreds that die on the roads every year.

It's like air travel, the rare but dramatic disasters make people more fearful than they should be. Seeing a large ferry come unexpectedly "close" may be scary to passengers, but unless the captain has been drinking on the job, just coming out of the berth the captains should have both been paying very close attention, and after Lamma IV would not be taking any risks.

You're totally right, the ferries here are extremely safe, and it's silly to think you're "risking your life" by getting on one of them every day. But it's equally silly to assert that it's "every day" that a cargo ship cuts you off and passes within a few feet as your ferry is accelerating from the pier.

Should have been ....... Yes! Absolutely! But he or she definitely was NOT paying attention.
I understand that human error happens - God knows I've had more than my fair Share. But I'm not the captain of an enormous passenger vessel carying hundreds of people. Surely as a society we can not cavalierly accept 'near misses' as normal. What if this standard were accepted for air traffic control in major airports? If passenger jets were found to be nearly colliding on a regular basis i dont think people would say it was acceptable.

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
----- Margaret Mead

Definition of "near miss" is the problem.

Huh? Silly.... OK go and tell that to the families of the 39 people who died.

Also.... have you been following the enquiry? The Marine Department and the Shipyard that built the boats..... a bit of signing off on Licences without checking that the boat is actually seaworthy and safe, and built to specific plans.

Oh and let's not forget the Sea Smooth... captain turned left??? Apparently this was the cause of the collision.

Oh,.. and the same captain apparently had been involved in three minor accidents in three years.

Yes, very safe. The roads are more dangerous yes..... but let's not get complacent here.

Next time do not pick a sit close to any windows but be mindful about the main scapes in case you have to jump to the water.... it is not worth to think about all the possible ways you can die in HK!

Nobody died on the HKKF ferry.
No one has died in an accident on any scheduled ferry in the 20+ years I've been travelling on them. A few have fallen overboard.

Nothing is perfectly safe, and safety can always be improved, but the ferries are, statistically, a very safe form of transport.

One of the HKKF ferries to Peng Chau never made it only a couple of years ago! It ran aground onto rocks on another island in thick fog! Hope someone can find the link for that story! It's only luck that no one was killed on that occasion!

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Sabe 1

Wait, it doesn't count if you fall off the ferry? What if it capsizes? I know of at least one person who died after falling off a ferry, they fell into the propeller, would that count?

Yeah, yeah. You've convincd me. The ferries are deathtraps and we should all go live in the middle of Mongolia, and never go anywhere near open water.

You mean near collision? A near miss in the English language doesn't make much sense. Is that like a hot water heater? I much prefer a cold water heater.

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Reuben L Sushman

I wasn't saying they aren't safe, but it seems a tad disingenuous to say that dying after falling off a ferry means that no-one has ever died on the ferry. Technically it's true, but still...

I have looked at a bunch of facts from the Marine Department website. Did you know that in 2011 there where over 200 collisions of commercial traffic outside of the Typhoon shelters? 40% of them involved passenger ferries. That is almost 2x week!

Over the last several years there have been critical injuries, at least one death I found, and several accidents that injured over 100 people. One of them 132 injuries.

In 2003 the MARDEP commissioned a report on traffic analysis and accident prevention. They predicted there would be fewer accidents involving larger ships and therefore more damage. A trend proving true. And they do nearly NOTHING about it!

The ferries are operated in a reckless and negligent manner and the MARDEP is complicit in that!

Without huge changes the next fatality is just around the corner. It's like predicting an earthquake. We know the places at greatest risk, but you can't predict exactly WHEN.

And the ferries here are NOT safe. The incident that Tavis is talking about should never happen, and if it does both the skipper should have severe punishments, but they won't and that is the reason why the ferries here are so dangerous,

The boats that have the most collisions are the Pearl River Delta cargo vessels. Add that to the fact that the ferries have collisions 2x week and I can tell you that it is only a matter of time before a bigger ferry is sunk by one of these (large) Delta ships with a massive loss of life. The Macau ferries are at grave risk due to their high speed coupled with large size (= high energy collision) and they have already had many several accidents.

The only question is if it is next week, next month, next year, 5 years, or this evening!

You read it here first!

BTW, Ferries HAVE collided with much larger Pearl River cargo vessels, one ferry even rammed a container ship before.

These are not normal occurrences in crowded harbours in the first world.