Extent to Which the Tricolor’s COLREG Violations Caused the Collision Sample Clauses

Extent to Which the Tricolor’s COLREG Violations Caused the Collision. The Circuit distinguished between factual, or but-for, causation and proximate causation, and held that both types of causation must be present to constitute a “cause” of the collision. In the context of a shipwreck, however, this Court is unable to construct a meaningful distinction between but-for and proximate causation, except that proximate causation appears, in the Circuit’s view, to be tied to the types of harm that the COLREGS seek to prevent. Nonetheless, this Court has analyzed each ship’s causative role with respect to both but-for and proximate causation and applies the Circuit’s standard for proximate cause when determining whether the Tricolor’s speed was a proximate cause of the collision, as the Circuit has instructed. On the Tricolor’s causative impact, the Circuit held that its violations of the COLREGS on overtaking were a but-for cause of the collision, finding that “[i]f the Tricolor had not chosen to overtake in an unsafe place and in an unsafe manner, the collision would not have occurred; the Kariba would have passed across the Tricolor’s bow.” Id. at 61. The Circuit found too that the Tricolor’s overtaking was a proximate cause of the collision because the “choice to overtake created a risk that other vessels, particularly the Kariba, would have less space, and less time, to avoid navigational exigency leading to a collision—the very same risk as makes inopportune overtaking a violation of the COLREGS.” Id. Therefore, the Circuit held that the Tricolor’s overtaking violations were a cause of the collision. The Circuit found that the Tricolor’s speed was a factual, or a but-for, cause of the collision because “if the Tricolor had been traveling slower, the Kariba would have turned safely in front of its bow.” Id. However, the Circuit did not decide whether the Tricolor’s speed was a proximate cause of the collision. The Court found that, notwithstanding “the familiar” Xxxxx v. Sugar Notch Borough, 191 Pa. 345 (1899), line of cases4, the Tricolor’s speed could have been a proximate cause, and charged this Court with answering the question in accordance with the following standard: This question [of whether the Tricolor’s unsafe speed was a proximate cause of the collision] hinges entirely on whether the Tricolor, had it not been proceeding at an unsafe speed, would have been able to stop soon enough to avert or mitigate the harm of the collision. In other words, the question hinges not on the factor of the Tricolor’s speed in isolati...