The National Safety Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its findings into a container ship's deadly crash into Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge, with the agency concluding that a loose wire aboard the ship was what caused the vessel to lose power twice before it collided with the span.

According to the NTSB's report released on November 18, a label slid too close to the end of a loose wire in the Dali container ship's control terminal, making it so the wire couldn't be fully inserted. The board also said that the crew's actions at the time of the blackout were "as timely as they could be," given that there was not enough time to avoid the collision with the bridge when the blackout hit the ship.

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NTSB investigator Todd Gianelloni noted in the report that the crew had conducted periodic inspections into the Dali, but without any specific instructions regarding loose wire connections, it would have been extremely difficult to have found a single loose connection among thousands of other wires. However, Gianelloni added that the crew might have been able to diagnose the issue had they used infrared thermal imaging to inspect connections.

The NTSB pointed to a lack of adequate countermeasures built into the bridge itself as one of the reasons for the collapse of the span following the crash. The agency also asserted that those countermeasures could have been put in place if that Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) had conducted a vulnerability assessment prior to the crash, although the MDTA has insisted that the collapse was solely the fault of the Dali's crew, as well as its owners and operators.