[cconover]

This is an area where I think the Coast Guard does a decent job. We have a program called Team Coordination Training[0] which, while monotonous and annoying to those who have to take it every year, aims to instruct students on the importance of clear, non-punitive communication between all members of a crew or team to ensure maximum situational awareness. Some implementations of the training are better than others, but the intent is good, and is a more useful tool than generic risk assessment models that are frequently blown off in practice.

[0] https://www.uscg.mil/safety/cg1131/tct.asp

[treetoppin]

I was a Junior Officer on a Coast Guard cutter for a year and a half. Without a doubt it comes down to command climate. Our Captain had "Standing Orders" that every deck watch officer was required to follow. This is required for all Coast Guard vessels, and I imagine for all Navy vessels as well. Included in these were reasons to call the Captain, where if certain parameters were met you had to call the Captain (and if its late at night that meant waking him/her up, explaining a situation over the phone, and providing a valid recommendation in accordance with the navigation rules of the road). The JOs I knew who made shitty and dangerous deck watch officers were those who would try to skirt the rules in order to avoid calling the captain. If the standing orders said to call the captain and provide a solution to avoid coming within two nautical miles of another vessel, and the radar was providing closest point of approach solutions that bounced between 1 nm and 2 nm, they would interpret that as not being necessary to call the captain.

So why would a deck watch officer not want to call the captain? Well if the captain refuses to ever admit to being wrong, chews people out for tiny things, tells people not to disturb them, or overall doesnt support their junior members then people become less worried about safety and more worried about covering their ass. A lack of training, crew fatigue and bad command end up with bad decisions being made, and when bad decisions are made at that scale people can die.

[willyt]

Totally. In the audio you can hear in the junior guys voice that he has no respect for his superior officer but is also terrified of him. The officer doesn't have a feel for how his ship handles and doesn't seem to fully understand the COLREGS either.