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Imagine you are crew, standing on a ship. You are facing east, and the bow of the ship is facing north. It’s night and there is a thick fog. You hear a cry “
by binarymax 3y ago
Imagine you are crew, standing on a ship. You are facing east, and the bow of the ship is facing north. It’s night and there is a thick fog.
You hear a cry “man overboard on the left!”
Where is the overboard person? Are they to your left, the ships left, or the left of the person shouting?
If the cry is instead “man overboard on the port side!” there is no question.
- wpietri 3y agoGreat points. And I'd add that thanks to wind and water, ships can also move in directions besides the obvious one. So it's possible in this case the boat could be moving west, giving another direction that left could be relative to.
- taeric 3y agoThis feels contrived, to be honest. Late at night on a vehicle that isn't moving with no other discerning factors to distinguish things, and you are basically screwed. Though, realistically, you are just going to wherever the shouting is coming from, you are not going to go slow to orient yourself to the vehicle. Even better, someone would yell something even more defining for where to catch someone that is going to be specific to the boat you are on. (Well, more realistically, you have hopefully practiced emergency drills such that the term is almost irrelevant, you have practiced so much.) This is about as worrisome as "you are the fire department, and you are told you need to rescue some people on the 14th floor. Quick, does that mean you go up 13 flights of stairs, or 11?" Realistically, you aren't getting it right on spur of the moment decision making.