Miami based, leading US maritime lawyer Jim Walker of Walker & O'Neill, says that he spent the afternoon yesterday in Washington DC. attending the hearing before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation titled "Recent Incidents Show Need for Stronger Focus on Consumer Protection."
He says that he has attended seven previous Congressional hearings on cruise ship safety issues from December 2005 through March 2012, with for the past eight and a half years, the cruise lines which attended these hearings have vigorously fought to keep the full extent of crimes which occur on cruise ships secret.
Mr Walker says that Senator Rockefeller has now introduced legislation which will require the cruise lines to disclose all crimes on a on line database which will be available to the public, with the previous database grossly incomplete after the cruise industry and the FBI watered the last cruise crime disclose down such that only closed files were disclosed.
He says that it seems like the FBI always says that most files are "open" even if it is not conducting an investigation, with the incomplete and misleading database a great disservice to the American public.
Senator Rockefeller released a comprehensive report which reveals that 959 crimes were alleged to have occurred on cruise ships and reported to the FBI since 2011, yet the U.S. public was informed of only 31 such crimes ... that's less than 3% of the total number of actual crimes.
The report can be read .
Mr Walker says that the proposed legislation to be called the "Cruise Passenger Protection Act of 2013 would give consumers a clear upfront summary of the restrictive terms and conditions in cruise contracts, the Secretary of Transportation would develop standards for the cruise lines to provide prospective passengers with a short summary of the key terms in the contract.
Consumers would be able to read a plain language summary of the key rights and limitations that passengers have during their cruise so they are fully aware of what rights they have, and don’t have, before they book their tickets.
He says that it will give the federal government more authority to protect cruise ship passengers, with the Department of Transportation the lead federal agency for cruise ship consumer protection, similar to the role it has in aviation consumer protection.
Passengers would also have additional protections in the event of a problem by giving the Department the authority to investigate consumer complaints.
The legislation would help passengers who encounter problems on cruise ships, with a toll-free hot line for consumer complaints and an Advisory Committee for Passenger Vessel Consumer Protection would be created to make recommendations to improve existing consumer protection programs and services.
In addition, all crimes alleged on cruise ships would be publicly available information, as the FBI currently only reports crimes that are no longer under investigation, causing the number of alleged crimes to be severely under reported and not giving potential passengers accurate information about the safety of cruises.
Cruise lines would also be required to place video cameras in public areas and would set requirements for cruise lines to keep the video footage.
The legislation would help passengers who have been a victim of a crime on the cruise ship, since they have limited access to law enforcement and the Department of Transportation would establish a victim advocate who can provide assistance to victims on board a cruise ship, making sure the victim is aware of his or her rights in international waters and getting access to appropriate law enforcement officers.
Senator Rockefeller released crime data on line under a series of reports and appendices entitled Cruise Ship Crime: Consumers Have Incomplete Access to Cruise Crime Data
Adam Goldstein, President and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, attended the hearing and promised that his cruise line would begin to voluntarily post crime data on the Royal Caribbean website and Carnival and Norwegian Cruise Line would do the same.
This decision by the top three cruise lines comes only after an eighth Congressional hearing, with Mr Walker saying, lets if these three cruise lines will live up to their promises for a change, with so far no word that any of the other 25 or so CLIA cruise line members will voluntarily release crime data.
