The Steering and Sailing Rules of International Regulation for Preventing Collisions at Sea now in use direct actions to avoid collision when two power-driven vessels are meeting on reciprocal or nearly reciprocal courses so as to involve risk of collision. But these rules do not refer to the minimum relative distances and safety relative distances between two vessels when they should take such actions.In this paper the ship's collision avoiding actions being analyzed from a viewpoint of ship motions, the mathematical formulas to calculate such relative distances necessary for taking actions to avoid collision were worked out. The values of maneuvering indices being figured out through experiments of 20 actual ships of small, medium, large and mammoth size and applied to calculating formulas, the minimum relative distances and safety relative distances were calculated. The main results were as follows. 1. It was confirmed that the criterion elements for collision avoiding actions in head-on situation of two vessels shall be the minimum relative distances and safety relative distances between them. 2. On the assumption that two vessels same in size and condition were approaching each other in head-on situation, the minimum relative distance of small vessel(GT : 160~650tons) was found to be about 4.7 times her own length, and those of medium (GT:2,300~4,500tons),large(GT:15,000~62,000tons) and mommoth (GT:91,000~194,000tons) vessels were found to be about 5.2 times, about 5.2 times and about 6.1 times their own lengths respectively. 3. On the assumption that two vessels same in size and condition were approaching each other in head-on situation, the safe relative distance of small vessel (GT : 160~650tons) was found to be about 6.8 times her own length, and those of medium (GT : 2,300~4,500tons), large (GT: 15,000~62,000tons) and mammoth (GT : 91,000~194,000tons) vessels were found to be about 9.0 times, about 6.3 times, and about 8.0 times their own lengths respectively. 4. It is considered to be helpful for the safety of ship handling that the sufficient safe relative distances for every vessels shall be more than about 12~14 times which are 2 times minimum relative distance, their own length on above assumption.

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