Most davit launched boats are fitted with skates, but even so there is only so much that you can do to make a boat able to be safely launched on a heavily listing ship.
SOLAS requires that boats are capable of being launched from a ship listing at an angle of up to 15 degrees, as anything more than this is considered impractical, as can be seen from Concordia, ships can easily list further than this.
More and more cargo ships are being fitted with free fall lifeboats as these are generally considered to be safer in both their operation in an emergency and in training drills, but passenger ships have not gone down this route for obvious reasons.
The ridiculous requirement to be able to evacuate a passenger ship in 30 minutes has pushed more and more companies towards the use of escape chutes and slides, using these methods they can evacuate thousands of trained people safely in a controlled test environment, therefore meeting the requirements of the regulation, trying to get 3000 elderly cruise passengers off using these chutes would be a disaster. Everyone knows it, everyone knows that boats would be safer and faster in the event of a real emergency, but the reuirement is to evacuate the ship in 30 minutes in an exercise, so chutes it is.
In light of the tragic events on Thomson Majesty the spotlight will again fall on whether or not crew should be in lifeboats when they are lowered to the water, the plus side of not having anyone in the boat is that tragedies like this could be avoided, the negative side is that crew need to practice emergency response so that it is second nature in a real emergency.
