Drinking and boating

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Nate

There's a fine line between freedom of choice and being a prat.

Fine line? More like a broad crayon... They are completely different things!

[Nate]

Richard,

absolutely right - my mistake.

What I meant was that freedom of choice often assists in removing those too stupid to know better from the gene pool.

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Nate

freedom of choice often assists in removing those too stupid to know better from the gene pool.

Sounds good to me!

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by gavin

Codprawn your post here cant really be taken seriously , anything to do with ,laws or Government, rules etc you have a problem with
In that respect already your opinion is biased.
If you dont wear a lifejacket, you have no place on a boat, dont just argue for the sake of it.
Maritime safety rules are there for a reason, respect Mr Blairs Governments wishes and abide by them, by falling in and not having a pfd, you cost me money

I always wear a lifejacket and I always use my seatbelt in the car - I don't do it because it's law - I do it because it's common sense.

On my boat I will ADVISE people to wear a lifejacket - if they are under 16 I will make them!!!

Far more people die in the water when they are NOT boating - it is totally impractical to expect people to wear a lifejacket when they are just near water!!!

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by codprawn

On my boat I will ADVISE people to wear a lifejacket ...

Thought you were going to get commercially coded? The you'll need to INSIST onlife jacket use!

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Thought you were going to get commercially coded? The you'll need to INSIST onlife jacket use!

Different with fare paying passengers!!!

[Tim M]

Originally Posted by CJL

Things seem to work pretty well on the non-tidal Thames and there are no major problems. In the Port of London the routinely breathalise skippers for erratic and stupid behaviour.

That sounds like a good system. Unfortunaly this doesnt seem to apply to the waterways round here. At the moment it's not policy for neither the police nor the Broads Authroity to breathalise people even if they are clearly drunk and in charge of a boat. (Which makes one ask why we have police on the Broads; "Broads Beat" has just been given a brand new Humber and a Range Rover to tow it with

[Nate]

Originally Posted by Tim M

Which makes one ask why we have police on the Broads; "Broads Beat" has just been given a brand new Humber and a Range Rover to tow it with )

Tim, your innocence is excusable as you're still undergoing full time education. The police have a long standing obligation to have the latest, most expensive bits of kit that we, the taxpayers, can afford. There is, of course, no imperative that links this expense with crime detection or prevention, but then again the police do very little of that sort of thing anyway.

[Jon Brooks]

Well codders

It would be a sad old world if everyone agreed.

Whilst not every fatal marine crash can be put down to drink there are a good number that are and a good number of "bumps" that are too!

No one rides on any boat I am in charge of without a life jacket.
If you don't like it get off!!
When your on my boat you are my responsibilty.
Your life in my hands.
I will do all in my power to ensure they are safe.
So that includes me not drinking and all wearing jackets.

Sorry but I think your fool hardy to "advise" them to wear a jacket.
If they fall in and die how guilty will you feel if you had not insisted on a jacket!!!

On a powerboat if things go wrong they go wrong fast and hard.

I also think that the suggestion that only boats that can do over 14 knts should be included in a drinking ban.
Have you seen the damage a sailing boat can cause even at slow speed?

I don't want a "nanny" state any more than the rest of us but sometimes it is for the best that this kinda thing comes in.

Maybe I am a tad anal when it comes to safety but I have seen first hand, more than once, the carnage a drunk driver leaves in his or her wake.

Best regards

[Scary Des]

I don’t think you can make a reasonable comparison between seatbelts and life jackets.
When it became mandatory to wear a seatbelt, deaths on the road went down from around 20k PA to under 5k and injuries by a similar %.
In 2002 (last reliable statistics) only 22 people drowned in boating related incidents and the stats don’t show how many of them were wearing lifejacket but if you are one of those people who believe the urban myth about leg straps then at least half were. So introducing compulsory lifejacket would have little benefit.
I wear a life jacket when conditions dictate, I always wear a buoyancy aid when dingy racing, I never wear a lifejacket when doing foredeck on a racing yacht and I will occasionally wear a jacket on the RIB.
The ability to assess risk comes with experience and maybe to gain experience people should wear lifejackets but to make it compulsory is ridicules.
Des

[Tim M]

Originally Posted by Scary Des

only 22 people drowned in boating related incidents

Does that include inland waterways too?

Originally Posted by Scary Des

The ability to assess risk comes with experience and maybe to gain experience people should wear lifejackets but to make it compulsory is ridicules.
Des

I disagree. Experiance is one thing but accidents happen and even the most experianced people get into difeculty when they least expect.

[Scary Des]

Originally Posted by Tim M

Does that include inland waterways too?

No, more drown in lakes, canals etc but they tend to be involved in a non boating activity such as dog walking

Originally Posted by Tim M

I disagree. Experiance is one thing but accidents happen and even the most experianced people get into difeculty when they least expect.

Accident will alway happen but experience helps to mitigate and anticipate, take driving for example, with a little experience you can start to anticipate when an accident might occur. Doesn’t mean you will have no accidents but the likelihood diminishes, this is reflected in the insurance premiums..Des

[Nos4r2]

Freedom of choice and freedom of speech are 2 things that are rapidly being eroded by this government. YEs, there's plenty of opportunity for being stupid but LEGISLATION WON'T STOP STUPID PEOPLE BEING STUPID, it'll just mightily piss off those that do things responsibly.

Ill informed policy making by people who have no real idea of the situation who are advised by businessmen who in turn have no idea is what I've come to expect from government and there's no reason it'll change.

I would expect the government consultation group on a policy like that to be something like:-
The top 2 shareholders in P&O
Ditto Townsend Thoresen (are they still going?)
Anyone else with sufficient money,an industrial interest and no idea that's never handled a boat.

You may laugh but that's exactly what happened when the new Working Time Directive(Transport) was formulated. Now all lorry drivers have to observe 2 different sets of rules at once which are almost impossible to follow to the letter. It's also the reason I'm getting out of the industry asafp. They are not only horrendously complicated but the 2 different government agencies responsible for enforcement can't even agree what the correct interpretation of them is between THEMSELVES. Add to that a great proportion of truckers are too stupid to understand even the basic gist of them anyway.

Are boaters REALLY any different?

[Nos4r2]

Just to reiterate what I said above about stupid people:-

Originally Posted by fishing forum

Great boats, more capable than you'd expect. I lost my uncle and 2 nephews in one

This was the gist of a SERIOUS post by someone on worldseafishing.com!

Someone on the same forum was ranting about how he'd fish wrecks with divers down on them...

[Scary Des]

There is no way of knowing what effect the drink driving alcohol limit has had because there are so many variables and the stats are misrepresented.

When the Police run a drink driving crack down and announce that convictions are up by X% on last year all they are really saying is they caught X% more which is no indication of how many people are actually drinking and driving. Variables such as the number of cars on the road, drinking habits, better cars and Police resources are not taken into account so the figure are virtually meaningless.
I suspect that there is still a great many people who regularly drink and drive without being caught so introducing a limit for boating will only result in the same but with more bureaucracy and no reduction of risk.

Another issue is that this is an area of the law where people are punished because they ‘might’ do something wrong as opposed to being punished for ‘actually’ doing something. If, as a result of drinking, you always had an accident then a ban makes sense but that is not the case, the vast majority will not have an accident.

An analogy is, small businesses are very likely to fiddle there VAT so because this might happen all small businesses should be fined in anticipation., clearly this make no sense.

I think that people should be given free choice and when, through the results of their actions, they kill someone throw the book at them, lock them up for years and publicly shame them etc it would be better than the current system that really doesn’t work. Des

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Nos4r2

Townsend Thoresen (are they still going?)

Oh yes, a simple name change and they are very successful as guess who... P&O Ferries.

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Scary Des

I don’t think you can make a reasonable comparison between seatbelts and life jackets.
When it became mandatory to wear a seatbelt, deaths on the road went down from around 20k PA to under 5k and injuries by a similar %.
In 2002 (last reliable statistics) only 22 people drowned in boating related incidents and the stats don’t show how many of them were wearing lifejacket but if you are one of those people who believe the urban myth about leg straps then at least half were. So introducing compulsory lifejacket would have little benefit.
I wear a life jacket when conditions dictate, I always wear a buoyancy aid when dingy racing, I never wear a lifejacket when doing foredeck on a racing yacht and I will occasionally wear a jacket on the RIB.
The ability to assess risk comes with experience and maybe to gain experience people should wear lifejackets but to make it compulsory is ridicules.
Des

Where on earth did you get your figures? No evidence at all to support them.Just found this on Wikipedia......

The law mandating the compulsory wearing of seat belts for front seat occupiers came into force on January 31, 1983 in the UK[9].

In the two years following the law there were increases of 14% in pedestrian deaths, 40% in cyclist deaths and 27% in rear passenger deaths, somewhat in excess of Isles' predictions. There was a reduction in driver fatalities and an increase in fatalities of rear passengers (not covered by the law)[10]. A subsequent study of 19,000 cyclist and 72,000 pedestrian casualties seen at the time suggests that seat belt wearing drivers were 11-13% more likely to injure pedestrians and 7-8% more likely to injure cyclists [11]. In January 1986 an editorial in The Lancet noted the shortfall in predicted life-saving and "the unexplained and worring increase in deaths of other road users"[12]. Shortly after this, legal compulsion was extended indefinitely.

Analysis of fatality figures before and after the law shows:

* a clear increase in pedestrian, cyclist and rear-passenger fatalities in collisions involving passenger cars
* no such increase in casualties in collisions involving buses and goods vehicles, which were exempt from the law
* a reduction in the number of drivers found to be drunk at the scene of collisions
* a reduction in overall fatalities between the hours of 10pm and 4am (peak hours for drink-driving offences)
* no reduction in overall fatality rates outside these hours.

In analysing these results, Adams concludes that there is no evidence of the seat belt law having reduced overall fatality numbers, and that there is evidence of fatalities having migrated from drivers to vulnerable road users. Although the Government argued at the time that the law had saved lives, it has subsequently attributed almost all the benefit for the small reduction in overall driver fatalities to the introduction of evidential breath testing.[2]

Seat belt use is a binary: the belt is either worn or not. Belt laws, which tend to lead to substantial changes in wearing rates over very short periods, would, if the predictions of up to 50% reductions in fatalities are correct, be expected to demonstrate large scale step changes in fatality figures. No such changes have been observed. Whether seat belts reduce fatalities, it is inescapably true that any reductions fall well below the predicted levels, a fact widely interpreted as supporting risk compensation theory.

Also look at the official figures - just under 6,000 deaths BEFORE the law was introduced in 1983 - after there was a SLIGHT drop but other deaths rose as they reckon people took less care behind the wheel cos they were strapped in!!!

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1208

[Searider]

Originally Posted by codprawn

Far more people die in the water when they are NOT boating - it is totally impractical to expect people to wear a lifejacket when they are just near water!!!

My 5 year old non swimmer has to wear his lifejacket as soon as we get onto the pontoons.

[Searider]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Thought you were going to get commercially coded? The you'll need to INSIST onlife jacket use!

No requirement in the code for passengers to wear lifejackets. You just need to have them on board.

[Phil Chitty]

Originally Posted by Searider

My 5 year old non swimmer has to wear his lifejacket as soon as we get onto the pontoons.

Here here. Couldn't agree more.

As does my girlfriends seven year old daughter who can swim well.