2024 USCG-AWO Safety Partnership Annual Report

The Coast Guard-AWO Safety Partnership’s National Quality Steering Committee has been tracking overall trends in towing industry safety and environmental protection for 30 years. The Coast Guard Office of Investigations and Casualty Analysis has released the latest Coast Guard-AWO Safety Partnership Annual Safety Report, analyzing 2023 incident data. For the second year in a row, the report showed a downward trend in the fatality rate with 3.3 fatalities recorded per 100,000 full-time employees (FTE), which was the second-lowest rate since the partnership was established in 1994. The report recorded four towing vessel crewmembers fatalities related to towing vessel operations in 2023, three of which were attributed to a fall to water and one attributable to a cardiac event. In addition, there were five recreational boaters died in four collisions involving a recreational vessel and a towing vessel, highlighting the relevance of AWO's new Recreational Boater Safety Working Group. None of the fatalities were towing vessel crewmembers. A total of 5,799 gallons of oil were spilled from tank barges in 2023 and the tank barge spill rate was 0.1 gallon of oil per million gallons transported, which is the fourth-lowest rate recorded by Partnership since 1994.