Inside Edition - Woman Falls Off a Carnival Cruise ship

[Keel Haul]

Some random thoughts:

 

Being drunk probably saved her in the fall. Her body was more flexible and less rigid as it bounced and fell.

I think a new Olympic Sport should be formed.The anti doping rules could be relaxed, that should suit you Americans.

 

The last sentence is a mix of sarc tit and an over active funny bone, it should not be taken literally.

[Keel Haul]

So why did the journalist need to get into the water in the dark and report how dark it was - was that really necessary? I get it, it's dark.

EEE Bye Gum not in the land of the midnight sun or Dewsbury as it is more commonly known

[Cruizinman]

Cruise ship accidents prompt questions: How do people fall off? And why?

 

When no one is around to witness a passenger descend from a floating city and disappear into the darkness, we're left to our assumptions.

 

Since 2000, the highest number of incidents reported came in 2006, when 22 people went overboard. But 12 million people cruised that year. That means roughly one of every 545,454 people who cruised in 2006 wound up in the drink. Not an astonishing safety hazard.

 

But if you consider that one of those reports was about a family with four children who returned from vacation with only three...

 

Or that one was about a man who returned from a Christmas cruise without his wife...

 

How do you fall off a cruise ship?

 

"It is virtually impossible for a guest to simply fall off a cruise ship," says Carnival Cruise Lines spokesman Vance Gulliksen in an e-mail.

 

Practically, falling overboard is a challenge. It would involve climbing or jumping or the right kind of momentum.

 

Carnival Cruise Lines' ships have 44-inch high railings and warning signs, says Gulliksen. They have uniformed security patrolling 24 hours a day.

 

Even cruise critics agree it's not easy. "Nine times out of 10, the person did something dumb," said Charles Lipcon, a Miami attorney and author of Unsafe on the High Seas: Your Guide to a Safer Cruise.

 

Lipcon has litigated a few where people have fallen overboard, including one in which a woman went missing and her purse was found on the deck and a security camera had been covered.

 

"They're very difficult cases," he said. "You need to prove that the cruise lines have violated some duty. And normally they don't. You can't keep people from doing dumb things. The ships aren't made out of rubber."

 

There are trends in these incidents.

 

Some are suicides. Couples fight, and then one jumps in an I'll-show-you kind of way. Some elderly couples have decided to leave the world together, a last hurrah on the high seas.

Alcohol is fuel. Critics say alcohol sales are a big moneymaker for cruise lines, so they have a tendency to overserve.

 

"It's drink and drink and drink," says Charles Harris, former chief of security for Carnival who has become an outspoken critic of cruise industry secrecy.

 

"We'll take your money, and if you fall overboard, we don't worry about it." (Carnival's Gulliksen says employees are trained to refuse service to intoxicated guests.)

 

Then there are the mysteries.

 

No notes. No suicidal tendencies. No heavy intoxication.

 

They fall or jump or stumble or are pushed, and no one is there to see, and the Coast Guard searches and the news breaks and we try to solve the puzzle on steadier shores.

 

 

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1841547

Thanks for posting, interesting.