Why the COLREGS Will Need to be Amended to Accommodate Unmanned Vessels

This article examines the May 2021 report by the International Maritime Organization on the outcome of the Maritime Safety Committee’s Working Group that conducted the Regulatory Scoping Exercise for the Use of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), with particular attention on the report’s conclusions regarding MASS and the 1972 Collision Regulations (COLREGS). The article criticizes the report’s conclusions to the extent they suggest that the operation of some MASS categories can be reconciled with the existing COLREGS rules by mere rule interpretations or the use of equivalences and warns that reliance on either approach would likely dilute the rules in their application to the far more numerous manned vessels. The article concludes that the advent of MASS will require amendments to the COLREGS.