the drive towards this new law was driven in part from a set of transport - related crashes in the late 1980s , such as the sinking of cross - channel ferry the herald of free enterprise in 1987 , the oil platform hawker alpha disaster in 1988 , and the marchioness thames river boat collision in 1989 . more than 400 people lost their families in these three disasters , but no individual individual or organisation was created to account .
100 or more people lost their lives in a ferry sinking.