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" Four days after the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia wrecked off the Tuscan island of Giglio, investigators are still trying to account for all the passengers and figure out just how a modern cruise liner hit a known island. We&amp;#039;ll keep you updated as more details about this wreck come out. But here&amp;#039;s what you should know about maritime disasters in the meantime. 1. Ships Sink More Often Than You Think The wreck of the Costa Concordia feels like an extraordinary example of either technological failure or human error. Indeed, while the investigation is ongoing, the early reports aren&amp;#039;t good for the captain of the ship. Francesco Schettino has been charged with manslaughter for his actions; he also allegedly left the boat before all the passengers were evacuated and refused to go back onboard to supervise the evacuation. But while a disaster of this scale is extremely uncommon, ships sink all the time. John Konrad, a former ship captain who now writes about maritime technology, says that a ship sinks about once a week on average. Most shipwrecks simply aren&amp;#039;t heavily reported because they&amp;#039;re not disasters on the scale of the Costa Concordia. 2. But a Disaster Like This One Is Less Likely Than It Used to Be Multiple Costa Concordia survivors compared their experience of the ship listing and panic taking over to the sinking of the Titanic. But three big things have changed in the century since that great ship went down, to make a major loss of life at sea far less likely.  First, it&amp;#039;s much easier for another ship to come to the rescue: After the Titanic, the U.S. Coast Guard created the Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue System, which tracks commercial ships around the world, and there are very few places left in the world (Antarctica, for example) where a rescue boat couldn&amp;#039;t reach a ship within a day. Second, ships are, of course, far more technologically sophisticated in 2012. And lastly, there just aren&amp;#039;t as many people at sea anymore. In the Titanic&amp;#039;s day, Konrad points out, ships were the primary way to travel the world. Today, there are far fewer highly populated ships, and cruise liners like the Costa Concordia stick primarily to safe areas like the Caribbean and Mediterranean rather than the harsh North Atlantic. 3. Modern Ships Can Still Be Surprisingly Low-Tech Ships are now outfitted with GPS, radar, satellite communications, equipment sensors, and computerized monitoring, U.S. Coast Guard spokesperson Jetta Disco says. And modern shipyards are automated. Yet right now, Konrad says, only about 10 percent of ships have Internet service, which hinders ship-to-ship communication. That&amp;#039;s because the price of high-speed Internet via satellite is about $15,000 per ship, he says, though that figure is coming down. New radar technology is making its way onto ships, but Konrad says that most mariners are still staring at an old-fashioned black-and-green radar set. 4. It&amp;#039;s All About People Ship disasters, like airplane crashes, tend to come down to the same rule: No matter how far technology advances, you need a human in charge who knows what to do, especially when something goes wrong. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s any vessel that can rely 100 percent on technology,&amp;quot; Disco says. Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino has been accused of serious negligence. But looking beyond this case, it&amp;#039;s the ordinary interplay of crew and computer systems that&amp;#039;s worrisome, Konrad says. Modern mariners have lots of good technology at their disposal, but he says that they&amp;#039;ve yet to figure out the best way to integrate it all into their watch protocol. Simply put, it takes more time to develop the human element than to develop new systems. &amp;quot;They can build a $1 billion ship in one year, but to build a $1 million captain to pilot that ship takes 10 years,&amp;quot; Konrad says. Sarah Fecht and Mary Beth Griggs contributed reporting for this piece. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a7475/4-things-to-know-about-maritime-disasters-6640490/>