Accident risk of Norwegian-operated cargo ships in Norwegian waters

This study surveys the sailed distance of Norwegian and foreign actors involved in transport of cargo at sea in Norway, and matches the results with accident data from the Norwegian Maritime Authority, in order to calculate and compare the accident risk of ships operated from Norway. The results show that ships sailing under Norwegian flag (NIS/NOR) have about three times higher risk of reported ship accidents of all damage rates than vessels with foreign flag with Norwegian operator. We find no statistically significant difference between the groups, when we compare the risk of ship accidents with serious damage. The key hypothesis that we originally were going to examine was whether foreign actors have higher accident risk than Norwegian actors. The data have not been good enough to answer this question. The foreign ships that we compare with are operated from Norway, even though they are sailing under foreign flags with foreign crews.