The drive towards this new law was driven in part from a string of transport-related disasters in the late 1980s, such as the sinking of cross-Channel ferry the Herald of Free Enterprise in 1987, the oil platform Piper Alpha disaster in 1988, and the Marchioness Thames river boat collision in 1989. More than 400 people lost their lives in these three disasters, but no one individual or organisation was brought to account.
100 or more people lost their lives in a ferry sinking.