Managing Accidents and Public Relations
A large part of public relations (PR) management is about prevention. PR advisors focus on the worst possible outcome and try everything in their power to change perceptions before bad things happen. The main difference between system safety and PR is the key objective: while PR management is there to protect the organisation from any harm, system safety is about eliminating or controlling safety hazards, even if the source of the hazard is the organisation or its leaders. This article offers my observations on a recent example, the initial court of inquiry after the sinking of HMNZS Manawanui.
Background
HMNZS Manawanui, a Royal New Zealand Navy ship, grounded on a reef on the southern side of Samoa, on 5 Oct 2024 while conducting survey operations. The crew attempted a routine turn but the ship did not respond as expected. Manawanui did not slow or stop, and instead the ship accelerated towards the reef, grounding multiple times along the way, before becoming stranded. There was no damage or flooding inside the ship, but stability assessments confirmed that Manawanui was no longer stable. The ship’s commanding officer made the decision to abandon ship. The ship caught fire after being abandoned, before capsizing and sinking on 6 Oct 2024. All 75 people on board the vessel evacuated safely. 1
According to the NZ Chief of Navy, “The direct cause of the grounding has been determined as a series of human errors which meant the ship’s autopilot was not disengaged when it should have been” and “Muscle memory from the person in control should have leaned over to that panel and checked whether the screen said autopilot or not. He also added that the crew “mistakenly believed its failure to respond to direction changes was the result of a thruster control failure”. Given human error was identified as the primary cause, a separate disciplinary process would need to be commenced once the Court of Inquiry had concluded, according to the Rear Admiral.2
A tough PR challenge
HMNZS Manawanui was one of only nine in New Zealand’s navy and was the first the country lost at sea since World War II. To make matters worse, the Interislander ferry Aratere ran aground near Picton in June 2024. The KiwiRail operated Aratere is New Zealand’s only rail ferry, meaning it is the only ship that can carry trains between the North and South Islands. In 2023, another ageing Interislander ferry, the Kaitaki lost all power in the Cook Strait with more than 800 passengers on board.
The recent maritime occurrences had a very similar public profile: sustained media coverage, a very intensive and emotional response due to a potential human and environmental catastrophy, and complex systems with many technical details that are hard to explain. In this context, the sinking of Manawanui was also a cause for national embarrassement. Not surprisingly, the immediate PR response was to highlight the role of human “screw-ups” with autopilot systems, essentially blaming human operators for both the Aratere and Manawanui accidents.
Impact on the accident investigation process
The fundamental problem here is that when “human error” is declared to be the primary cause of an accident, it is nothing more than a PR label, a form of social judgement. It is a reflection of a widespread belief that human operators can somehow be better trained or disciplined in order to prevent similar accidents in the future. If we accept these biased social judgements, we fail to learn about how complex systems malfunction. And if we fail to understand those systemic causal factors, we cannot eliminate or control the underlying safety hazards.
In this instance, there are many unanswered questions about the design and behaviour of automated systems and the unexpected interactions between the crew and the automation, as a result. The preliminary findings of the Manawanui inquiry were meant to describe WHAT happened during the occurrence instead of firmly pointing the finger at three Navy officers who happened to be in charge on that fateful day. Commencing a disciplinary process may seem beneficial when managing a tough PR challenge, but it will certainly not help mitigating the risk of a similar accident in the future.