The recent spate of collisions and groundings in the Dover Strait and its approaches lend some urgency to Admiral Van Hooff's paper in which he calls for the introduction of traffic information in regions at sea where the traffic may be controlled by local authority after the fashion of air traffic control. The author was until recently Director-General of Pilotage and Aids to Navigation in the Netherlands Ministry of Defence.

The number of voices that maintain that the conduct of ships about the sea, particularly when approaching ports or other focal areas, should be regimented in a similar way to aircraft when under Air Traffic Control, has been steadily on the increase.