A better life jacket

Design consultants Richard Seymour and Dick Powell confront the ferry life jacket, one of the most critically important objects used by people in which innovation can literally make the difference between life and death. They meet Paul Barney, a survivor of the Estonia ferry disaster of 1994, Europe’s worst shipping accident since the Second World War, which claimed 852 lives. Barney survived that terrible night, but with no thanks to his life jacket; amid the panic of the unfolding disaster, he struggled to put on because he couldn’t understand how it worked. At the Fleetwood Offshore Survival Centre, Seymour and Powell are put through an emergency drill. As they test existing life jackets before plunging into the depths, they recognise the problems. Life jackets aren’t really jackets at all but, due to the requirements of buoyancy and of stowing on ferries, they are unfamiliarly-shaped objects that are difficult to put on at speed when you are scared in the dark. Their design has been blamed for causing unnecessary deaths in recent ferry disasters. The designers are convinced that there must be a better life jacket.