Nautical Collision Avoidance : The Cognitive Challenges of Balancing Safety, Efficiency, and Procedures

Experimentally investigate maneuver decision preferences in navigating ships to avoid a collision. How is safety (collision avoidance) balanced against efficiency (deviation from path and delay) and rules of the road under conditions of both trajectory certainty and uncertainty.

Human decision error is a prominent factor in nautical collisions, but the multiple factors of geometry of collisions and role of uncertainty have been little studied in empirical human factors literature.

Eighty-seven Mechanical Turk participants performed in a lower fidelity ship control simulation, depicting ownship and a cargo ship hazard on collision or near-collision trajectories of various conflict geometries, while controlling heading and speed with the sluggish relative dynamics. Experiment 1 involved the hazard on a straight trajectory. In Experiment 2, the hazard could turn on unpredictable trials. Participants were rewarded for efficiency and penalized for collisions or close passes.

Participants made few collisions, but did so more often when on a collision path. They sometimes violated the instructed rules of the road by maneuvering in front of the hazard ship's path. They preferred speed control to heading control. Performance degraded in conditions of uncertainty.

Data reveal an understanding of maneuver decisions and conditions that affect the balance between safety and efficiency.

The simulation and data highlight the degrading role of uncertainty and provide a foundation upon which more complex questions can be asked, asked of more trained navigators, and decision support tools examined.