Why This Cargo Ship Navigation System Collapsed

Описание: Modern cargo ships cross oceans guided by navigation systems that promise near-perfect reliability.
Satellite positioning, digital charts, sensor fusion, and automation are trusted to keep billion-dollar vessels precisely on course. This documentary examines how cargo ship navigation systems collapsed not through dramatic failure, but through silent faults, degraded signals, and misplaced trust in automation. As global shipping adopted GNSS-based navigation, ECDIS displays, and integrated bridge systems, crews increasingly relied on fused digital positions rather than independent verification. Small discrepancies were dismissed, alarms stayed silent, and gradual errors accumulated unnoticed.

Presented by Alex Mercer, transport systems analyst, this episode breaks down how timing drift, sensor fusion bias, satellite interference, software updates, and human automation complacency combined to undermine navigational certainty at sea.

Rather than focusing on a single incident or vessel, the film follows the system itself — from GNSS dependency and Kalman filter assumptions to degraded integrity warnings, AIS distortions, and the erosion of manual navigation skills.

This is not a story about storms or dramatic disasters.
It is a case study in how cargo ship navigation systems collapse quietly, when automation masks uncertainty and human vigilance fades.

Transport Failures documents how modern transport infrastructure fails — and why these failures continue to repeat across global systems that appear stable until they are not.