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Why Are Cruise Ship Falls Becoming More Common?

If you decide to take a cruise on your next vacation, you should be able to expect that the cruise ship company will provide certain safety features on the boat that will prevent avoidable cruise ship accidents from happening. Yet according to a recent article in Quartz, cruise ship accidents and injuries might be more common than you think, and some of those accidents can be life-threatening. To be sure, “people fall off cruise ships with alarming regularity,” the article reports.

Whether you are a Florida resident and sustained an injury on a cruise, or traveled to Florida for the particular purpose of taking a cruise vacation in which you sustained a fall-related injury, it is important to learn more about cruise ship liability and your options for seeking compensation.

Personal Safety Risks on Cruise Ships

According to the Quartz article, “since 2000, 284 people have fallen off cruise ships.” To put that figure another way, an average of 1.5 people per month falls from a cruise ship, and most if not all are declared missing and later presumed to be dead. In many cases, cruise ships attempt to avoid liability by arguing that passengers who have fallen from their ships are negligent themselves because they have consumed too much alcohol and have not behaved responsibility.

Yet when a cruise ship serves alcohol, it has a duty to ensure that it is not serving alcohol to the point that life-threatening injuries could occur as a result of the alcohol consumption. Further, cruise ships need to consider the ease with which passengers can fall off the ship. Family members who have lost loved ones in cruise ship falls argue that these vessels simply need to have more safety enhancements to prevent this particular kind of accident.

Recent Cruise Ships Falls and Fatalities

Highlighting the problem of cruise ship falls and fatalities, the article cites a recent case of a 33-year-old woman who fell off a Carnival cruise ship. In this particular case, the ship had a capacity of 4,000 passengers and crew members. The cruise ship had various bars onboard, and within a relatively short span of time, the woman was served 19 drinks in total. She climbed up onto a railing on the pool deck, and she sat on the railing for a brief period of time. The railing was approximately 3.5 feet high. Within a few moments, the thermal camera system onboard the cruise ship showed that she fell backward off the railing and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Given that the fall happened in the early hours of the morning, the woman’s friends did not report her missing until daybreak. The Carnival staff did not contact the U.S. Coast Guard until about 15 hours had passed from the time of the woman’s fall. And the article suggests that this type of accident—and the response to it—is not an anomaly.

Contact a Boca Raton Cruise Ship Injury Lawyer

Were you injured on a cruise ship? While personal injury law involving maritime injuries can be complicated, an experienced Boca Raton cruise ship injury attorney can help with your case. Cruise ships have a duty to ensure that the premises do not have serious safety risks and that precautions are taken so that guests do not suffer severe or fatal injuries in a fall.

When falls do happen on cruise ships, the injury victim or her family may be able to seek financial compensation. Contact Lesser Lesser Landy & Smith PLLC to learn more about the services we provide to clients who have been injured on cruise ships that dock in Florida.

Resource:

qz.com/1443797/why-do-people-keep-falling-off-cruise-ships-because-people-keep-stepping-onto-them/

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