The Collision Regulations are due for revision by Imco in 1972 and already governments and other agencies are formulating proposals for consideration by its Maritime Safety Committee. The Institute's working party on the subject, which was formed initially to try to lessen the area of disagreement between people who had put forward positive proposals over the last few years, has now formed a cohesive view and formulated a set of recommendations. These are given in the interim report which follows. In the normal course of events things would have been allowed to run their course and the final report published only after further meetings of the working party which has still to reach firm conclusions on a number of points (for example on the precise form of the manœuvring diagram referred to at the end of Section 2 and in proposition (14), and on the whole question of lights). However, time is short and it seems probable that if the views of the working party are to have any effect on the deliberations of Imco, they must be made known straight away. The report (of which M. W. Richey is the author), therefore, which embodies the whole area of agreement between the members of the working party, is published here in interim form.

Dr. Calvert has expressed some unease from his own point of view about propositions (1) to (19) and it is hoped in the final report to publish an appendix by him suggesting a totally new approach to the whole problem of collision avoidance by manœuvre. It is hoped also to publish an appendix by Admiral García Frías describing the system he proposes. Both these contributions are perhaps likely to be of long-term rather than immediate significance.