The fundamental approaches for preventing collisions at sea are based on interpreting and understanding the Collision Regulations correctly. Although the Regulations are the technical standards of collision avoidance conduct at sea, they are also the code for dividing liability1. When one tries to apportion the collision liability between two parties, the first question faced is whether the Rules apply and if so, when do they apply? In order to answer this question, this paper has reviewed most of the English, American and Canadian cases in the past hundred plus years, which are related to this topic and outlined briefly four special circumstances where collision avoidance rules do not apply, even if there is a risk of collision.

The introduction of AIS in 2002 and the drive to introduce electronic navigation aids to merchant ships had the principal stated objective of improving safety by enhancing situational awareness. This paper reviews the various types of electronic equipment fitted to vessels during the past five years in order to assist the watch-keeper, comments on the reduction in core watch-keeping skills and argues for a back-to-basics approach for watch-keepers. A version of this paper was first presented at the RIN conference NAV 07 in October 2007.