Today's merchant fleet deals with many seafarers' injuries every year during work, training and also leisure activities. Such injuries are not only extremely dangerous for the crew, as medical care at sea is often limited, but also cause huge economic impact and reputational damage for ship owners and operators. To reduce work and life injuries on board, many companies today are implementing a newly developed behavior-based safety system (BBS). This system is designed to prevent incidents not by administrative, defensive or engineering methods, but by changing the mindset of seafarers, putting safety above any other objective. However, practice shows that seafarers on merchant ships are not interested in learning the system due to many factors, ranging from low autonomous motivation to high workload levels.

The aim of the study is to analyze the existing behavior-based safety system of merchant ships and to explore the possibilities of using virtual reality (VR) technologies to improve training and increase safety on ships. The maritime industry is becoming increasingly dependent on innovative technologies, and the use of VR is a promising approach for seafarer education and training.

In this study, the authors analyze existing standards and practices in the field of behavioral safety at sea. The research conducted an experiment with the aim of comparing traditional theoretical training methods with the use of VR training methods in ship conditions. The results of the experiment were obtained, which provide an explanation why merchant fleet crews do not pay enough attention to the use of the BBS system for crew training and the use of the VR tool for the education of seafarers on board the ship.

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Keywords: Maritime, education, virtual reality.