# Should wearing a lifejacket be mandatory?



## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

We've had a rash of drownings in Ontario this summer. Some of them have been swimmers, but there's now a move afoot to make it mandatory for boaters to wear a lifejacket/PFD rather than just have it on board. Transport Canada is reviewing the regs, and on August 12 the commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police issued a public statement supporting the idea of mandatory wear. No one is making distinctions between size or class of vessel.
I've already had a shot at this subject on my cruising blog. I quite often wear a pfd when sailing my C&C 27, as well as a safety harness (which the law doesn't require) but I think requiring lifejackets to be worn on all vessels, all the time, is regulatory overkill. It's like making all drivers and passengers in automobiles wear helmets because motorcyclists are prone to head injuries. I do think it should be mandatory for vessels 6 meters or less, which would take care of the vast majority of "problem" boats. (Besides, anyone with an ounce of common sense is already wearing a pfd when they're in a canoe, a kayak, or a sailing dinghy, not to mention a yacht tender.) I could go on, but I won't. Wondering instead how other people feel about this.


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## POLKA247 (Apr 15, 2008)

I live in Oregon. I believe we have a state law that requires any one under the age of 12 has to were a pfd on docks and aboard any size vessel, unless inside the cabin.
Canoes, kayaks etc is mandatory to where
We have a club rule, when doing club function racing, committee boat or cruise in to where one. 
How ever when just mucking about we have to have one at the ready per person on board. 

Seems to work here. We have had one or two river drownings this year, swimmers. 

Have you thought about have to where up to a certain age group?


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## genieskip (Jan 1, 2008)

Mandatory = bad idea


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## POLKA247 (Apr 15, 2008)

How about an age specific must wear. Here in Oregon 12 and under must wear a pfd on docks and decks of boats.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

Age-mandatory for one thing sounds good. We already have age limits on operating personal watercraft (jet skis). 
We don't have strict rules at our club about wearing pfds on work projects, but when we assemble the sailing club's floating docks in the spring (and take them apart in the fall) the designated foreman has generally asked people to put one on, as the water is pretty cold on Georgian Bay on the shoulders of the season. People do put them on.


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## WanderingStar (Nov 12, 2008)

It's your own life, you decide. Boating is more dangerous than bicycling or softball, but not by far.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

Here's the Oregon state law on lifejackets. Mandatory wear is limited to kids (with exceptions) and boats on class III rivers.

General:

All boats must carry at least one U.S. Coast Guard-approved personal flotation device (PFD) for every person aboard. Such devices must be in serviceable condition. They must not have any rips, tears, or broken straps. All devices must also be kept readily accessible for use in an emergency situation. Personal flotation devices in a plastic bag or in a storage compartment are not readily accessible.

Persons being towed are considered on board the towing boat and there must be an approved Type I, II, or III device aboard for each.

Children age 12 and under must wear a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket at all times while on an open deck or cockpit of vessels that are underway or when being towed. Inflatable PFD's are not approved for children. 

State Law -Specific terms:

No person shall operate a boat on Oregon waters with a child age 12 and under unless the child is wearing a U.S. Coast Guard-approved personal flotation device (PFD)/life jacket, of the appropriate size, while the boat is underway. Children on an open deck or cockpit of sailboats, motorized and non-motorized vessels (canoes, kayaks, rafts) underway must wear a life jacket at all times.


Beginning January 1, 2010, ORS 830.215 will be amended to read:
NEW (3) Notwithstanding the classification by the State Marine Board of the types of personal flotation devices approved for various classes of vessels pursuant to subsection (2) of this section, a person operating a boat on any section of waters rated class III or higher on a commonly accepted scale of river difficulty, and all passengers in the boat, shall wear a properly secured personal flotation device. The personal flotation device must be of a type prescribed by rules adopted by the State Marine Board. 
(See carriage requirements and PFD Types below).

Exceptions:

* While child is below deck, or in an enclosed cabin of a boat.
* When the child is on a sailboat and tethered by lifeline or harness that is attached to the sailboat.
* When the child is on a U.S. Coast Guard-inspected passenger-carrying vessel operating in navigable waters of the U.S.


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## speciald (Mar 27, 2007)

The racing rules require that crew in open water races have personal flotation devices on at the start and end of races. During the race, the captain may or may not require them; placing liability on the captain.


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## n0w0rries (May 17, 2009)

Just wait, after they force you to wear a PFD, you'll be forced to wear a helmet next.


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## eryka (Mar 16, 2006)

I don't think the gov't should be in the business of trying to legislate common sense. 

On our boat, the rules are: PFD and clipped in after dark; PFD if going forward of the cockpit when there are whitecaps. I've also heard of the odd boat rule PFD if the sum of air temp plus water temp is less than 85 degrees (Farenheit)


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

speciald said:


> The racing rules require that crew in open water races have personal flotation devices on at the start and end of races. During the race, the captain may or may not require them; placing liability on the captain.


ISAF rule 1.2 states:

1.2 Life-Saving Equipment and Personal Flotation Devices
A boat shall carry adequate life-saving equipment for all persons on
board, including one item ready for immediate use, unless her class
rules make some other provision. Each competitor is individually
responsible for wearing a personal flotation device adequate
for the conditions.


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## peptobysmol (Apr 30, 2009)

eryka said:


> I don't think the gov't should be in the business of trying to legislate common sense.


They won't. If they try, 98% of legislators will never get elected.

On second thought, we do have seatbelt laws now...


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## canadianseamonkey (Sep 4, 2006)

Our Country reflects more and more the ways of Communist Countries. Our Government wants to regulate anything it can get its hands on and enforce new stupid laws like bringing the alcohol limit down to .05 for DUI. You'll never catch me wearing a lifejacket in a sailboat in moderate winds, it's nonsense....law or not. Kids, I believe should be treated differently.

These people we have drowning are being stupid when the accident happens. One guy dove into rapids to try and save his daughter...he had no life jacket. What do you expect. His daughter should maybe have been wearing one. The other accidents were preventable as well. Like everything else, it takes a couple of idiots to ruin it for the rest of us.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

I agree with the 12 and under should be manadory, beyond that NO, keep them readily accessible and allow common sence to dictates there use.

I also think having different brands or colors of PFD's ( same functions and features ) is a good idea, that makes it easily identifiable who is fitted to which PFD and everyone will be fimilar with each device regardless who wears it


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## sck5 (Aug 20, 2007)

different colors is fine with me but i will always pick an extremely bright color if given a choice. If I go over I want them to see me really really easily.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

Color really doesn't matter once your in the water and it's been activated, most all, once inflated are bright yellow


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## flatracker (Aug 16, 2009)

*More regulation*

I am personally against any gummint intrusion into our life. And one thing I learned a looooooong time ago is no amount of laws can overcome stupidity. Any one who won't wear a life vest when needed is stupid. PERIOD I wear a self inflating when it gets nasty, when I have to get up on deck, and a lot when single handing. They are relatively comfortable, and I trust them. But they are not CG legal, and if the law were changed to require a vest to be worn, they would probably not count. So, if you haven't figgered it out, my vote is NO NO NO


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## zeehag (Nov 16, 2008)

MANDATORY=NO is correct--mandatory=if yer on board eating dinner ye has to wear one --lol---tooo much government intervention and too many laws already-----puleeeeze.......helmet laws and seatbelts are enough, already!!!!!


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

poopdeckpappy said:


> I agree with the 12 and under should be manadory, beyond that NO, keep them readily accessible and allow common sence to dictates there use.
> 
> I also think having different brands or colors of PFD's ( same functions and features ) is a good idea, that makes it easily identifiable who is fitted to which PFD and everyone will be fimilar with each device regardless who wears it


It wasn't that long ago in Canada that you could only get lifejackets and pfds in yellow and red, for SAR reasons. But pressure from the US market forced regulators to relent and allow whatever color you want, including camoflage and Mickey Mouse and Goofy cartoons. The logic was that people would be more willing to actually wear them if they made some kind of fashion statement.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

flatracker said:


> I am personally against any gummint intrusion into our life. And one thing I learned a looooooong time ago is no amount of laws can overcome stupidity. Any one who won't wear a life vest when needed is stupid. PERIOD I wear a self inflating when it gets nasty, when I have to get up on deck, and a lot when single handing. They are relatively comfortable, and I trust them. But they are not CG legal, and if the law were changed to require a vest to be worn, they would probably not count. So, if you haven't figgered it out, my vote is NO NO NO


Don't know what you mean by "not CG legal." Inflatables are legal as PFDs in Canada, anyway, and are very common. The marine police wear them.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

poopdeckpappy said:


> I agree with the 12 and under should be manadory, beyond that NO, keep them readily accessible and allow common sence to dictates there use.


I still think it would not be the end of the world if the regs required them to be worn in canoes, kayaks, small open runabouts etc, for the simple reason that you should be wearing one anyway, and if we want to pay taxes to have marine patrols, we should stop the time wasting (and intrusive) practice of patrols "pulling over" small craft and having the occupants rummage through their cockpit lockers yanking out pfds to show they're complying. Just have the cops and CG eyeball small craft whose occupants should be wearing them. If they've got em on, fine, just move on to the next candidate. I got pulled over once on Georgian Bay in a 20-foot center console, and it was actually dangerous, bouncing around in waves, banging against a police boat.
Honestly though, we're still going to lose plenty of people to Darwin's Law of the dumb ones going first. I don't think any reg is going to stop the deaths in which some dingbats at a cottage decide to down a case of beer and go canoeing in the middle of the night. Death by canoe (and alcohol) is a Canadian tradition.


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## bloodhunter (May 5, 2009)

I believe Maryland law mandates life vest wearing for kids under a certain age (our kids are all adults and we don't have any grandkids yet (sigh) so not sure of the exact age). That being said, my wife and I always wear auto-inflatables when on deck -- inflatables are USCG-approved as type V life vests -- and we offer them to our guests who usually put them on when we go out. However, I'm of two minds about mandatory wearing of life vests. On the negative side, I don't like the govenrment tell us what to do in yet another area where we should take personal responsibility; on the positive side life vests do save lives, but only when they're used. Not sure what side I'd come down on if I had to make a choice-- but I don't so I won't


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## celenoglu (Dec 13, 2008)

Falling to sea is a very rare case. PFD's and life jackets might break your arm or injure you if you fall from some hight. I cannot imagine myself wearing a life jacket in a summer month. 

I think the rule works:

If you forc everybody to wear PFD's on all boats, most of the boaters will give up sailing in those waters, if no body sails no body will be drowned and the rule seems to work.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

I am against the mandatory wearing of bike and motorcycle helmets, because I am for organ harvesting. The math is pretty simple. The death of someone more concerned with the wind in their hair than safety permits the saving of someone with terminal disease.

Go, "freedom". Try to land on your head.


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## AE28 (Jun 20, 2008)

No!


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## gimmellsdad (May 28, 2009)

Valiente said:


> I am against the mandatory wearing of bike and motorcycle helmets, because I am for organ harvesting. The math is pretty simple. The death of someone more concerned with the wind in their hair than safety permits the saving of someone with terminal disease.
> 
> Go, "freedom". Try to land on your head.


I think it's pretty funny how this same debate rang through about wearing seatbelts and how uncomfortable they are. This should be a no brainer.

Valiente-I've never heard it put so poetically. As a Canadian, I find it wierd driving through some states and seeing people riding their morotcycles without helmets.


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## Stillraining (Jan 11, 2008)

Should wearing a lifejacket be mandatory?

No Way!


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## n0w0rries (May 17, 2009)

I just can't believe how some people are so quick to give up their freedom.

When it comes to helmets and PFDs, I think people should have the freedom to do what they please. Smart people will wear appropriate safety gear when conditions merit. If I decide to hop on a quad and ride slowly across the camping area to get a cup of coffee... I should be able to do that without a helmet on (but it would be a ticket where I ride). If I'm jumping dunes and I'm not wearing a helmet, that's darwinism.

I wondered when I bought my kayak if I was forced to wear a PFD. That makes no sense to me. If I'm swimming, I don't need a PFD, but if I'm riding a giant flotation device I need one? I figured if I got questioned about it I'd just jump in the water and tow it to show how ridiculous it was.

Can we just take a state that nobody likes and turn it into this regulationville that some people crave? You'd need somebody with common sense so you could figure out what all the new laws needed to be, and surveillance cameras everywhere so they could be enforced. Maybe a new website, finepal, so you can easily pay your fines online.

I prefer Margaritaville myself.


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## AE28 (Jun 20, 2008)

n0w0rries said:


> Can we just take a state that nobody likes and turn it into this regulationville that some people crave? You'd need somebody with common sense


nOw...

Talking about government regulation and using the words "common sense" in the same paragraph is a non sequitur!!!

That's a major part of our problem - the writers and enforcers of our laws have no common sense!!!

Paul


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

I guess it all comes down to whether you feel you should have enough sense to wear a lifejacket in certain boats (or the right not exercise common sense), or if the law should tell you to do so. On my keelboat, I don't feel the law should tell me, even though I wear one routinely. But I've done enough canoeing, kayaking and dinghy racing over the years to know that it is just common sense to wear one in those small craft, because the likelihood of ending up in the water is high. Where I live, cold water is an additional complication. If the law decides it should be mandatory for small craft, so be it, at least where I live. Warm-water sailors may feel quite differently.
I can well recall how years ago in one-design racing all us macho sailors would wait for the Race Committee to hoist the lifejacket flag before thinking of putting one on. Now it's pretty much a given that you wear one all the time. If you've ever capsized a dinghy and had to right one, especially in waves, you'll know how quickly you tire. That's not when you need to be figuring out where your PFD has floated off to.
I can't imagine paddling a kayak without wearing one. If you're not wearing it, and the law requires one, where are you going to put it? If you capsize a kayak and find yourself hanging upside-down under water, you'll wish you had thought to put on the PFD. A guy early in the season this year flipped his kayak near Parry Sound. He had to struggle out of the boat, but at least he was wearing the PFD. The cops found him 30 minutes later, succumbing to hypothermia but afloat in his PFD and clinging to the boat. I'm sure he thought he was invincible.
So I guess my position is, IF the powers that be are thinking of regulating lifejacket use, let's limit it to the boats you should be wearing one in anyway, and where they will save the most lives. But it will also, as I've said, do away with a lot of time-wasting and invasive police inspections. (That said, when I was pulled over on Georgian Bay as I mentioned, I had my kids with me and everyone was wearing a PFD. The police just kept asking me to produce things, and I finally realized they were probably having me open every imaginable hatch so they could see if I had any open beer.)


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## zeehag (Nov 16, 2008)

i think we have already too many government mandated intrusions into private life--when will it stop?? why can people not make themselves safe without government intervention?? why do people think that government should be required to make their personal lives safe?? why cannot the people do that themselves?? the government is not about personal safety--the government is about running country. lets keep it that way and use our own brains regarding personal safety. no there should be no more laws regulating the way in which we undertake our own personal safety. maybe there should be a law regarding what brand toothbrush a person should use or the toothpaste one should have to use--it all makes the same lack of sense to me.....kinda like taking kids to boats for a sail is child endangerment----lets get real here.....we do not need more laws--we need more common sense put into practice.


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## sab30 (Oct 11, 2006)

I do on the other hand have a different perspective...over and over the term of "common sense" is brought up yet isnt that why a law attempts to deal with..those that lack the common sense to be wearing one when we should be. It is somewhat perplexing that we want to make them laws for children but whats a childs opinion on this..wouldnt they want there father or mother to be around to take care of them. When should we be wearing one?? People seem think that common sense will never put them in the water in that situation. They are called "accidents" and no matter the precautionary measures you take you may be the one in the water...

Im just curious that if the push back is because of the "the government wont control me" attitude? If we all have so much common sense like we claim, wouldnt we all wear one all the time when out on the boat? 

I guess your last thought maybe that if fact you will drown die all because you wouldnt wear a small nylon harness that inflates in the water and saves your life...but we sure showed those in government  our surviving children/spouses family and friends would be proud


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## jjablonowski (Aug 13, 2007)

Should wearing a lifejacket be mandatory?

Yes! Absolutely. Right after we pass a law that mandates that all pedestrians wear helmets at all times walking on public sidewalks.

After all, one might trip on a lump in the sidewalk and break his or her head, thus sparking a lawsuit against a municipality that failed to curtail sidewalk hazards. And we'd all pay the multimillion judgment. So it's in our common interest to protect against such possibilities.

OK folks. Now, let's get real.


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## sab30 (Oct 11, 2006)

jjablonowski said:


> Should wearing a lifejacket be mandatory?
> 
> Yes! Absolutely. Right after we pass a law that mandates that all pedestrians wear helmets at all times walking on public sidewalks.
> 
> ...


I thought of that....the "life has risks" argument. Risks everywhere...but to what level...I guess the answer is what level of risk and how would the precautionary measure reduce those odds. Im thinking walking on the street does not carry the same amount of risk as going overboard on a boat..maybe Im wrong. If your killed as a pedestrian I doubt its something a helmet would have prevented. A PFD would most likely be the difference between life and death by providing enough time for you or the MOB to be rescued by the boat.

Again your decision..your family, friends and loved ones...maybe check with them first.


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## davidpm (Oct 22, 2007)

sab30 said:


> I'm just curious that if the push back is because of the "the government wont control me" attitude? If we all have so much common sense like we claim, wouldn't we all wear one all the time when out on the boat?


I always wear one. I put it on when I leave the car and take it off when I get back to the car. I'm about the only one that does however. I race and no one wears a jacket unless the conditions are bad or the rules require it.
On the dock if I see someone over 18 wearing a LV it is very rare.

I wear a real life vest not an inflatable one because I don't even trust the inflatable's and it is cheaper.
I think a lot of our behavior is adapted from others, not decided personally. If we are new to boating or young we see more experienced boaters not wear life jackets so we don't wear one. The cycle is perpetuated
Welcome "Saved By The Jacket"
I look like a dork wearing my life jacket while everyone else is showing off their racing wear. I even get comments and looks. I just don't care anymore.

I don't think a life jacket is particularly uncomfortable I got used to it. I like the pockets in the front. I'm not a great swimmer and I figure that if I'm unexpectedly in the water I'm already having a bad day and if I'm wearing a life jacket I have a few moments to contemplate my most recent stupid move without having to concern myself with staying afloat.

I do have a funny story about how peer pressure can work either way. One captain I crew for regularly has a 10 year old daughter. Every time we go out she noticed I wear a LV and her father does not. One time she asked me about it. I explained my reasons. She made her dad promise he would wear the life jacket at all times like I do.
Smart kid.

As to whether it should be law I have very mixed feelings about that. 
Supposedly wearing life vests would reduce casualties to less than half. 
I think the only reason people don't is because other people don't.
If you stuck a Calvin Klein logo on one and some hot move star wore one you couldn't keep them in the stores.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

The problem Sab is your likely to get a ticket for going from one boat to another for dinner in a dink, motoring over to the pumpout station, the fuel dock or haul out before some LEO will cites you in open waters

Once it's a regulation it becomes revenue for local governments and they will tap the income; So a line needs to be drawn and the best place for that line is a " No " but thanks for your concern


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## zeehag (Nov 16, 2008)

when do we decide to end govt control--when our very dreams are controlled by the govt as we sleep?? when we have to by law tell govt when our neighbors have parties?? when we are controlled lock , stock, and barrel by the govt and have absolutely no recourse or choice in the matter??? when the govt dictates to us when and how many kids each family is allowed to have and in what manner we are to treat them>???(we are already half way to that one)--when we are taxed to more than 80 percvent of our income for govt projects?? before or after the govt is able to control the kind an dnumber of cars we keep for each family>??? do you realize how many laws are atually on the books???? do you knp wthat every january there are over 1000 new laws in californoia alone?? every year!!! how many more do you want to have ?? why is it that families are not allowed to be families anymore?? do you realize that taking kids to a boat now is considered child endangerment??? and that is WITH life vests on and worn....what kind of govt do you want to have--do you really want one that interferes to the point of controlling what and where you and your kids learn education and where you are allowed to live and how many kids you are allowed to have and whether you are even qualified to have kids?? or to marry?? govt can and will get there in this country if we allow this to continue. smart folks use the safety equipment
the rest --survival of the fittest. an di am on eof the ones who treast the dumb ones in the emergency rooms---there ios a place an dtime for govt control--we are spozed to be the land of the free---we no longer are--and will be a lot farther from free when more mandatory stuff is passed....


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## sab30 (Oct 11, 2006)

I hear ya Poop....and beyond our boat I really dont care if anyone drowns for deciding not to wear one.  

I was giving that the perspective that perhaps the reason for this proposed law (much like seatbelts, fire extinguishers on boats etc etc) is to represent the people that do have an interest in you not drowning or surviving.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

sab30 said:


> I hear ya Poop....and beyond our boat I really dont care if anyone drowns for deciding not to wear one.


you're right, we should mandate safety regs on scuba. surfing, camping, hiking, hell we should regulate base jumping just in case someone decide to jump without a chute



> I was giving that the perspective that perhaps the reason for this proposed law (much like seatbelts, fire extinguishers on boats etc etc) is to represent the people that do have an interest in you not drowning or surviving.


I appreciate those who are concerned with my safety, but trust me, I know when to put on my vest, I know who will wear a vest the moment they step aboard to the moment the step off, I don't need common sence regulate.

Those that do need their lack of common sense regulated, fate has a way of helping you find it

I think it's odd that people want to make it manditory to use a PFD wihile boating on one hand and fight to legalize drugs on the other, I think it's safe to say that there are far more drug OD's in a single day than there are boat related drownings in a entire year, oh wait, that's right, they want to tax and regulate it for the revenue


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## zeehag (Nov 16, 2008)

seems that is another problem--too many folks interested in other peoples' lives--mind own biznet and let folks be--why do folks have to worry about my life--they need to worry about their own lives...lol


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

gimmellsdad said:


> I think it's pretty funny how this same debate rang through about wearing seatbelts and how uncomfortable they are. This should be a no brainer.
> 
> Valiente-I've never heard it put so poetically. As a Canadian, I find it wierd driving through some states and seeing people riding their morotcycles without helmets.


The phrase "as one door closes, another opens" can be used in such cases.

My sister's on a liver transplant waiting list. Her odds of getting a donor would be better in the States not due to the supposed shortcomings of Canadian medicine (about which pundits and propagandists in the States are ignorant or frequently lie about), but because there are fewer Darwinian situations in Canada. Guess we are "freedom-haters".


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## scottbr (Aug 14, 2007)

Lifejackets on smaller boats make sense. I have the kill switch for the dinghy attached to my life jacket and wear it. Just couple weeks ago a girl fell out of a dinghy and was hit by the motor as it kept running and came back around.

Wearing seatbelts makes sense, but most people did not wear them until made manditory. Bottom line they save lives and injuries for the most part are less severe than before seatbelts. Legislation not only reduced injuries / deaths but also reduced the cost to the health care system. We shouldn't have to pay for someones "right" to injure themselves needlessly when a simple device is available. ( without going overboard of course, with the wearing of helmets while walking debate)

The current discussion by the OPP is a reaction to the officers having to bring news to the families and is understandable, although is over reaction IMHO, to include larger boats.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

davidpm said:


> I do have a funny story about how peer pressure can work either way. One captain I crew for regularly has a 10 year old daughter. Every time we go out she noticed I wear a LV and her father does not. One time she asked me about it. I explained my reasons. She made her dad promise he would wear the life jacket at all times like I do.
> Smart kid.


Next door to us is a relatively famous and solidly successful jazz musician (not a contradiction in terms in his case). He actually makes a decent living playing and recording. We both live on a fairly major and old inner city street with streetcar tracks. It's narrow to the point that the space between a parked car and a streetcar is maybe just over a metre (four feet or so). You can get "door prized" very easily in such a situation.

I saw him with his six-year-old daughter on a rear-wheel carrier seat of his bicycle (like me, they don't own a car). She was strapped in and helmeted. He was wearing a pork pie hat (remember, he's a cool jazz musician, right?)

I mentioned the "cognitive dissonance" of his strapping his daughter in, with helmet (this is the law for kids), while he went virtually bare-headed. He commented sheepishly that he didn't like helmets. I said that my grandfather didn't like seatbeats, but that my father liked being an orphan even less.

I wonder if my little story had any effect.

I didn't regularly wear a helmet until after the mid-80s. I was a bike courier, a fast, dangerous job akin to playing badminton on a high-wire. A guy got sideswiped in winter and went over his handlebars into one of the heavy grey metal streetside lockers the posties use to hang their bags and foulies for pickup and transfer of mail.

He didn't die, but he wasn't right again. The last time I saw him, he was furiously shouting at a basket he was trying, unsuccessfully, to weave. Or something equally in the "please kill me now" line.

So all you people who get revived after drowning, but are brain damaged and require your bottoms wiped...until you die 50 years from now...do _I_ have the freedom to cut your irresponsible fecking throats to save the five million bucks wasted on keeping your stupid husk alive?

Where does "_freedom from_" factor in? The freedom to take one's chances doesn't happen in isolation. If it did, imagine what we could save on paramedics and SAR resources. "No seatbelt, Charlie, just let 'em bleed out".


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## painkiller (Dec 20, 2006)

Just worry about yourself and your passengers. Stop trying to use the whole SAR/Rescue arguments to claim the right to interfere in people's lives. This can be taken too far. Wait until the government provides healthcare for all of us. Don't smoke! Don't eat red meat! After all, we all have to pay if you're ill!


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## AE28 (Jun 20, 2008)

painkiller said:


> Just worry about yourself and your passengers. Stop trying to use the whole SAR/Rescue arguments to claim the right to interfere in people's lives. This can be taken too far. Wait until the government provides healthcare for all of us. Don't smoke! Don't eat red meat! After all, we all have to pay if you're ill!


Yes, but those of us who drink red wine will get a special rebate on our Form 1040!!!


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## pdqaltair (Nov 14, 2008)

*It is going to be 95F on the Chesapeake today, with little wind. Heat stroke?*

I honestly believe that the risk of heat injury and the frequency of accidents due to heat-impared judment will out wieght the slight risk of drowning in a large boat in settled weather. A canoe or PWC is different. Bad weather is different. Night is different.

Starting from when my daughter was tiny, we didn't use PFDs on her, we used a harness and jacklines. I broke the law. I also felt it was safer, and that is all that mattered to me. I could see my girl was certainly going to get heat stroke, all insulated-up in the jacket. We used PFDs in the water and in small boats.

At night and in rough weather I would MUCH rather see harnesses than PFDs. Only an optimist believes a PFD will help a sailor on a lone night watch.

I hear all of the arguments and I won't dismiss them out of hand. I do not agree, however, that the requirment will increase the greater good, when everything is totaled up. Is freedom worth the death of a few and the rest of us paying the tab. Yes, as a nation, we believe it is. Where we draw our lines is the challenge.

I would like to see the option, for children, of a harness for any boat over a minimum size, perhaps 24 feet.


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

"do I have the freedom to cut your irresponsible fecking throats to save the five million bucks wasted on keeping your stupid husk alive?"
Yes, you do. Or rather, you _would _if you exercised the obligations and rights of a citizen more strenuously.

I wear seat belts because they seemed like a good idea, and because I've learned that I can walk out of what used to be a car if I do so. I wear a PFD because I love the water--and know it can outlast me. And I wear a bicycle helmet because a friend of mine got knocked down in a major biking rally many years ago, when helmets still came in one color (White) from one maker (Bell) and he spent several weeks in the hospital after his head slid into a curb stone.
On the other hand, I never wore one skiing and simply continue to believe that I won't be aiming for the trees.

I think people should have the freedom of choise to wear these things or not. And in any rational society, they would have that freedom while the rest of us were not forced to be responsible for them. For instance, there's a section at the base of most seat belts that deforms in an impact, so you can tell if they've been used. Slam into a pole, and the "witness" in the car says you weren't using your seat belt? Then your insurer should have the option of offering you a policy that says "No belt, no coverage" at a different price from the "belt, coverage, we pay" policy.

IT CAN BE DONE. And if not perfectly, at least done fairly well. You don't want to wear a PFD? A seat belt, a helmet? Great, sign a release and put it on an open national record. And when someone bags you & tags you, they can check the list and say "Ooops, no coverage on this one. He signed the list." Maybe that means no care, maybe it means cash care. All the rest is trivial--once someone forces the law to recognize individual freedom and responsibility and end the socialist facism.


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## peikenberry (Apr 26, 2000)

Thanks Paul, I am one of the reg writers and enforcers that you mentioned. Not all (there certainly are some, mostly in the halls of Congress) are without commonsense. In my 34 years with the USCG I learned one thing very quickly, when it comes to small boats, there is very little common sense to go around. I use to have a quote over my desk when I was doing boating accident investigations that said "never underestimate the power of human stupidity!" (R. A. Heinlein)

I have been around boats of all sizes from dinghies to ships, all my life.. If I get in anything much less the 25 feet or so, I put on my lifejacket. I have my own which I keep in the trunk of my car. I know it fits. However, on larger vessels I may not wear it. It depends on the conditions. Here is where common sense comes in. Lifejackets should be put on at the first sign of impending danger. Most people don't do that. They are the ones who die because they didn't. Reviewing boating accident fatality investigations for 20 some years proves that. 

However, I am not in favor of manadatory wearing for adults, but I am for children. Children simply do not have the wisdom to know when to wear and not to wear, and often neither do the adults around them. Why make the kids die for their parents mistake? 

I am also in favor of mandatory wear for PWCs, Canoes, Kayaks, and just about anything under 13 feet long. Why those? Because that's where a lot of the fatalities occur. 

Inflatables are a good option on the comfort issue. But they are damned expensive. I use a regular type three stearns vest. 

However I am for requiring lifevests to be bright colors. Sometime when you are out in your boat throw something green, blue, or brown in the water that is about the size of a persons head, and back off 500 feet or so. Try spotting it with the naked eye. (it will be easier for you because you already know where to look) It's almost impossible from the water's surface and damned hard from a helicopter. Bright colors make all the difference. That's why lifeboats and other life saving apparatus are almost all international orange.


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## bheintz (Jun 14, 2001)

peikenberry said:


> I have my own which I keep in the trunk of my car. I know it fits.


Just like fowl weather gear, it makes sense to bring your own PFD: you know it will fit, its condition, how to put it on, and you don't have to ask where it is.

I'm not in favor of mandatory use for any size vessels, but I often wear one.

Anyone want to explain why rowers in a crew shells are exempt, are they in less danger than competent dinghy sailors?


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

scottbr said:


> Just couple weeks ago a girl fell out of a dinghy and was hit by the motor as it kept running and came back around.


An incident just happened last week in which a girl was run over on Georgian Bay and was rushed into Honey Harbour to hospital. Details are sketchy (police said the inflatable hit a wave and bounced the girl overboard) but it raises one related issue that drives me nuts: people in powerboats who let their kids sit on the bow with their legs dangling over the gunwale. I saw a family out the other day blasting around doing this and one of the kids must have been 4 years old. Kid was wearing a lifejacket, but that's not going to do much good when they fall in and the prop chops them into fish bait. A stupid, dangerous practice.


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## midnightsailor (May 23, 2003)

How about letting me decide what is good for me and you worry about what is good for you and leave all the regulators out of this !!!


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

Valiente said:


> So all you people who get revived after drowning, but are brain damaged and require your bottoms wiped...until you die 50 years from now...do _I_ have the freedom to cut your irresponsible fecking throats to save the five million bucks wasted on keeping your stupid husk alive?


Damn, I missed the post where a stupid husk said he would NOT wear a PFD, though I did see a few that said they would wear or insist that a PFD be worn if & when the conditions and or crew member ( regardless of age )warranted it's use.

I also got the impression that many don't like or need every aspect of their life dictated to them simple because it's good for the whole

Hypothetical:

Say your sailing the Atlantic North or The PNW on a beautiful day, sea is calm, wind is mild and you're wearing your vest. You go into a nice little anchorage, drop the anchore and start stowing gear when all of a sudden you trip over a poorly stow coil of rope and stumble over the lifeline ( which hits you below the knees ) lucky for you you're wearing your vest, unfortunetly the water is 40-50 degs and you dont have your boarding ladder deployed; if you just float there you'll last about a hour, but if you struggle to get back on board you'll only last a few minutes.

So, when they finally find your half eaten but still floating body several days later and determine that you died within a few minutes of hypothremia, shall we mandate that EVERYONE is to wear a survival suit and boarding ladders MUST be deployed while at anchorage ???


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## knothead (Apr 9, 2003)

That


Diva27 said:


> I guess it all comes down to whether you feel you should have enough sense to wear a lifejacket in certain boats (or the right not exercise common sense)


That's the point. I do have the right not to exercise common sense. I'm an American. I am free. 
At least so far and to some degree. I wonder how long it will last with so many people who think that everyone in our society should be treated as if we all had the same intellectual capacity as the most stupid among us.

That


Valiente said:


> So all you people who get revived after drowning, but are brain damaged and require your bottoms wiped...until you die 50 years from now...do _I_ have the freedom to cut your irresponsible fecking throats to save the five million bucks wasted on keeping your stupid husk alive?


I know for a fact that there are a lot of people who think that taking a small sailing vessel to sea and subjecting one's self to the whims of nature, especially with a family, is the epitome of stupidity.

What say we let the majority decide if we should be allowed the freedom to pursue our chosen lifestyle. How bout it?


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## knothead (Apr 9, 2003)

Better still, lets let the government and those among us who are so much wiser than we into every aspect of our lives to regulate all the things we do to make our lives safer and less expensive. 
Isn't it really stupid to allow kids to have skateboards. Bicycles are very dangerous. Bathtubs should be banned. Don't even mention archery. Do you have any idea how many children were injured on the baseball diamond last year. 
O God! I am never leaving this room again.  Life is too dangerous to live.


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## painkiller (Dec 20, 2006)

These are the same governments that demonize the tobacco industry yet see marijuana taxation as a potential way to get them out of their fiscal incompetency. The knuckleheads asking for all of these safety laws are probably the same people that complain about overpopulation. Ironic.


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## peikenberry (Apr 26, 2000)

bheintz, crew racing and other bonifide racing events where the lifejacket would restrict the performance of the athlete, are not exempt, they are what in leagalise is; excepted. That is an exception from the law. Supposedly there is a chase boat close by to rescue anyone who does go overboard. In reality I see a lot of shells with no chase boat. But most of the time there is a chase boat. But I have a real issue with the chase boats. On the high scholl crew level many times these boats are operated by 15 and 16 year olds and I have seen some pretty crazy stunts by the crew on the chase boat.

Diva, riding on the bow with legs dangling, or on the sides or gunwale with legs dangling is considered by almost all marine law enfrocement to be negligent operation. A lot of people have been cut up catastrophically y doing this. It is a stupid, dangerous, and illegal practice. But we simply don't have enough enforcement to cover everywhere. Some would say thank God, but I think we need more than we have.


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## artbyjody (Jan 4, 2008)

The question of Life vests mandatory. I preface - I have 18 available (onboard - all the fancy self inflate kinds) and I never take more than 12 people out. The remaining is for practice or when in the the unexpected instance - can be used in assistance (btw you know you can use them as life slings). Overkill yes, one day - may save lives, hopefully never in that situation.

Personally, I don't think they should be mandatory with exception of night-time, poor weather,and racing (in instances where wind speeds do drive the boat).

Otherwise, they can be distracting (admittedly - I personally do not wear one if less that 8 knots wind) but focus should simply be on safety and no one ever stated safety is a comfort scenario. Idle day - no wind, fine skippers discretion - but anything that can lead to an instance of MOB - skipper should make it mandatory - not because it is law, but because he has one of two things going for them-self:

1. Common sense
2. Knowing any injuries comes back in a insurance claim.


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## sab30 (Oct 11, 2006)

knothead said:


> Better still, lets let the government and those among us who are so much wiser than we into every aspect of our lives to regulate all the things we do to make our lives safer and less expensive.
> Isn't it really stupid to allow kids to have skateboards. Bicycles are very dangerous. Bathtubs should be banned. Don't even mention archery. Do you have any idea how many children were injured on the baseball diamond last year.
> O God! I am never leaving this room again.  Life is too dangerous to live.


Good debate...couple points..where we live kids must use helmets at the skateboard parks or they are not allowed, it is law for bicyclists/motocyclists to wear helmets, it is the the law to use a seabelt while driving, its the law to have a fire extinguisher on a boat. I dont know how many kids were killed playing baseball last year but if there was a trend of needless deaths occuring on the ball diamond then maybe that should be addressed. I dont look at any of these as the government taking away my god given freedoms for I am Canadian. 

I see it as a calculation of the following......does doing one simple preventive measure avoid many unnessary deaths...not as a conspiracy theory of big brother attempting to rule every facet of my life...is there agreement that the use of seatbelts is a good thing or is that seen as goverment interference? My cousin was killed because he wasnt wearing one...thrown from the vehicle..and it was the law...but no one would tell him what to do..that pissed me off. For such an effortless task children would still have a father..wife would have husband...I would have a friend. I see lifejackets as the same thing...no I dont try to live our lives in a prtective bubble and yes I get the risks but if there is somet simple act that can be done to prevent a bad situation from turning into a nighmare then I will do that on my boat..again people will do what they want because of personal beliefs...and thats fine because that is the freedom you speak of....not whether or not the government makes a law to prevent a certain behavior.

I will bow out on that note....


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

sab30 said:


> Good debate...


it is good



> it is law for bicyclists/motocyclists to wear helmets,


This has been brought up a couple time now and I gotta say, our helmet and seatbelt laws have a bit of weird history, nationally both were implimented back in the 70's but not enforced, it wasn't until the feds threaten states with cutting highway funds did the states start to poorly enforce these laws: even today not all states are uniformed in the enforecement of the seatbelt law, some consider it a primary violation, some a secondry violation and one state only requires <18 to wear them, it's only been the last few years that Ca. has cracked down on the law

The helmet law is even more fragmented nation wide

Do either of these two laws save lives ?? some still debate this, it's almost like the GW debate


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## bheintz (Jun 14, 2001)

*racing shells, rowing sculls, racing canoes, racing kayaks, and sailboards*



peikenberry said:


> bheintz, crew racing and other bonifide racing events where the lifejacket would restrict the performance of the athlete, are not exempt, they are what in leagalise is; excepted. That is an exception from the law. Supposedly there is a chase boat close by to rescue anyone who does go overboard. In reality I see a lot of shells with no chase boat. But most of the time there is a chase boat. But I have a real issue with the chase boats. On the high scholl crew level many times these boats are operated by 15 and 16 year olds and I have seen some pretty crazy stunts by the crew on the chase boat.


It has nothing to do with being _bona fide_, otherwise one could suppose an Olympic Class like the Finn might qualify: anyone who has sailed a Finn knows that it is a tight squeeze under the boom during a tack.









According the Annapolis Rowing Club Rules "In the unlikely event of a collision which completely sinks the shell, remove the oars from the oarlocks, so that each rower has an oar as a PFD." It goes on to say that an oar can also be used for a MOB.

According to 33 CFR § 175 rowing sculls and racing shells are not considered small craft for the purposes of the safety laws and as such do not carry any equipment not solely for competitive racing. A requirement for a launch escort is not specifically set forth. The term used in the CFR's is _Exemption_.

Before anyone preaches to me about the perils and dangers of sailing and boating, I'd like racing shells, rowing sculls, racing canoes, racing kayaks, and sailboards considered in their safety evaluation.


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## SundancerKid (Dec 21, 2008)

poopdeckpappy said:


> Do either of these two laws save lives ?? some still debate this, it's almost like the GW debate


Absolutely yes. Australia mandated the wearing of seatbelts back in the 70s (it took a few years for all states to adopt it) and enforced it. Very rare that you see anyone not wearing a belt these days. The road safety guys still point to the drop in the road toll charts when that was introduced. IIRC, with something like 3 times the number of cars on the road today (and far greater average miles being travelled each year) our road death toll is still much lower than it was prior to the introduction of mandatory seat belts.


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## knothead (Apr 9, 2003)

sab30 said:


> Good debate...couple points..where we live kids must use helmets at the skateboard parks or they are not allowed, it is law for bicyclists/motocyclists to wear helmets, it is the the law to use a seabelt while driving, its the law to have a fire extinguisher on a boat. I dont know how many kids were killed playing baseball last year but if there was a trend of needless deaths occuring on the ball diamond then maybe that should be addressed. I dont look at any of these as the government taking away my god given freedoms for I am Canadian.
> 
> I see it as a calculation of the following......does doing one simple preventive measure avoid many unnessary deaths...not as a conspiracy theory of big brother attempting to rule every facet of my life...is there agreement that the use of seatbelts is a good thing or is that seen as goverment interference? My cousin was killed because he wasnt wearing one...thrown from the vehicle..and it was the law...but no one would tell him what to do..that pissed me off. For such an effortless task children would still have a father..wife would have husband...I would have a friend. I see lifejackets as the same thing...no I dont try to live our lives in a prtective bubble and yes I get the risks but if there is somet simple act that can be done to prevent a bad situation from turning into a nighmare then I will do that on my boat..again people will do what they want because of personal beliefs...and thats fine because that is the freedom you speak of....not whether or not the government makes a law to prevent a certain behavior.
> 
> I will bow out on that note....


I hope you realize that I was attempting to illustrate the absurdity of the government mandating the wearing of life jackets by being even more absurd.

If "doing one simple preventive measure avoid many unnecessary deaths." is the goal. Then we should be talking about forcing every person that drives a motor vehicle to submit to random drug testing. We should also mandate that every human capable of participating in the creation of a child undergo training before they are allowed to do so. 
That would prevent many unnecessary deaths. The number of drowning deaths from not wearing a life jacket can't even be compared.
But that will never happen. (or at least I hope not ) Ya know why? Because people would feel that it is an unfair restriction of their freedom. And rightly so.


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## bubb2 (Nov 9, 2002)

knothead said:


> If "doing one simple preventive measure avoid many unnecessary deaths." is the goal. Then we should be talking about forcing every person that drives a motor vehicle to submit to random drug testing.


Knotty, here they are called sobriety check points. That is if you consider alcohol a drug.


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## sab30 (Oct 11, 2006)

knothead said:


> I hope you realize that I was attempting to illustrate the absurdity of the government mandating the wearing of life jackets by being even more absurd.
> 
> If "doing one simple preventive measure avoid many unnecessary deaths." is the goal. Then we should be talking about forcing every person that drives a motor vehicle to submit to random drug testing. We should also mandate that every human capable of participating in the creation of a child undergo training before they are allowed to do so.
> That would prevent many unnecessary deaths. The number of drowning deaths from not wearing a life jacket can't even be compared.
> But that will never happen. (or at least I hope not ) Ya know why? Because people would feel that it is an unfair restriction of their freedom. And rightly so.


In Canada drugs are now included in DUI laws and we do have random road checks that look for both...I do like the idea of mandatory parental training 

Going on vacation for a couple weeks...dont drown while im away :laugher


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## AE28 (Jun 20, 2008)

hellosailor said:


> Then your insurer should have the option of offering you a policy that says "No belt, no coverage" at a different price from the "belt, coverage, we pay" policy.
> 
> IT CAN BE DONE. And if not perfectly, at least done fairly well. You don't want to wear a PFD? A seat belt, a helmet? Great, sign a release and put it on an open national record. And when someone bags you & tags you, they can check the list and say "Ooops, no coverage on this one. He signed the list." Maybe that means no care, maybe it means cash care. All the rest is trivial--once someone forces the law to recognize individual freedom and responsibility and end the socialist facism.


YES, agree wholeheartedly!!!

I've been saying this for years and happy to finally see at least one other person so minded.

Let the wallet be the deciding factor as to wear or not wear!!!

Thanks,
Paul


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

This has been a really informative exchange, and I'm glad I started the thread. One thing that strikes me is that people really start drawing the line on mandatory stuff when it gets next to their skin (and then I guess under their skin). 
I think boaters accept that they (or boat manufacturers) need to adhere to particular wiring standards. Having the right to use the wrong gauge of wire is not something I see people clamoring for. Same goes for mandatory equipment like manual bilge pumps, engine compartment blowers, and anchor lights. Law says you need them, that "common sense" is not enough, no one puts up a fuss. Ditto for propane installation requirements. In fact, boaters who don't pay attention to safety-based equipment standards are considered idiots by other boaters. We let the "nanny state" (or insurance companies) tell us to equip the boat in a manner they deem safe (or insurable at a reasonable premium and coverage). But ask someone to wear a pfd rather than just have one on board, and suddenly our personal freedoms are at risk. It's next to the skin, on our person. I count myself in that bunch, as while I've said a law mandating their use on vessels 6 meters and under would not be a bad thing, I still want to reserve the right to exercise good judgment and seamanship on my keelboat in deciding when to wear one, which extends to using a safety harness the law doesn't demand (where I live). Maybe in another generation I'll be looked at as a fool.
Interesting thing is that we're not hearing (unless I'm wrong) demands from insurance companies for mandatory wear of PFDs, the way we have for mandatory smoke alarms or sprinkler systems in homes. It's a clue that the vast majority of drownings not involving pfds involve vessels that have nothing to do with their business. Cruising, especially keelboating, continues to be exceptionally safe, and that's a credit to cruising boaters themselves.
Earlier posts have mentioned helmets in other activities, some skeptically. I wear a helmet on my bike, and a couple years ago I started wearing a helmet while skiing after getting hit by a snowboarder. My reason is simple: I'm self employed and don't want to end up as a vegetable and unable to support my family. Heck, I just don't want to end up as a vegetable. Helmets could become mandatory in downhill skiing, and I wouldn't stand in the way.
That said, when people want the right to do whatever they want on the water, they generally also want the right to have all the resources of COSPAS-SARSAT and marine police and coast guard and military search and rescue to come to their aid, at no charge to them, when they get in trouble. The state always pushes back, trying to minimize the reasonable need to go to the expense (and risk to SAR folks) of rescuing people doing things with an unhealthy level of risk. Back-country skiers and snowmobilers face the same issues. We want to send out a mayday on our digital vhf integrated with our GPS and have the SAR safety net swoop down to yank us back into our lives of unfettered freedom, but we want to draw a line somewhere that says the state can't make unreasonable demands on how we go about our lives.
People seem to fear a slippery slope of encroaching regulation. Others can decide whether that's actually progress in the case of making the leap from being required to carry a pfd to being required to actually wear it. One or more posts have mentioned the scary spectre of public healthcare, which from north of the border I can see has become a furious issue with my American friends. For what it's worth, in my 50 years on the planet, living in a public health care system, no doctor or government health agency has dreamed of ordering me to stop eating meat. (Or has tried to tell me to pull the plug on grandma.) Someone smart once said that the difference between the US and Canada is that in the US the motto is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," whereas in Canada it's "peace, order and good government." But that's another subject. 
Cheers.


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## bheintz (Jun 14, 2001)

Diva27 said:


> Someone smart once said that the difference between the US and Canada is that in the US the motto is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," whereas in Canada it's "peace, order and good government." But that's another subject.


huh? I thought this was the Canadian motto:


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## AE28 (Jun 20, 2008)

diva27 and bheintz...
Your #66 and #67 are great!!!
Paul


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

Well, seems like if they want to dumb down the gene pool they could just require mandatory lobotomies and random concussions before breeding age, instead of going to the expense of requiring PFDs.

Or, if they just want to foster full employment (hiring all those new "What are you wearing?" Inspectors) they could hire shoelace checkers instead. You know, folks who get paid to walk around, or hide behind things, and leap out to fine people with untied shoelaces?

Of course, they'd have to waive the fine for the ones who'd been lobotomized.


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## merlin2375 (Jul 12, 2007)

No, it should not be required.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

SundancerKid said:


> Absolutely yes.


Don't get wrong, I agree that seatbelts, Helmets and PFD's would/do/will save lives, but the enforcement is wacked

example;

My dad taught me to drive @12, by the time I was 14 I was driving solo if needed, back then seatbelts weren't mandatory but I was told to use my head when driving and that meant using the belt when driving, weather and visual condition warranted it's use, which I did up till early 2000; That's when I got a ticket while driving down a my residental street at 6am on a sunday morning for not wearing a seatbelt, two days later I got a ticket as soon as I pulled out of my office parking lot........you ask me both the LEO's had more zeal than common sense

example;

I also started riding dirtbikes when I was 13 and by 15 I was racing (43yrs ago ), back then there was no Helmet law but common sense dictated wearing heavy boots, thick shirts and pants ( today we use full body armor  ) and a helmet. Back then I would cross the last gate, I could remove my helmet and putt back to the pit area or go do some singletracking with just a baseball hat, back in 2004-5 I got a ticket from the BLM while I was putting to the start gate for not wearing my helmet ( keep in mind I'm in the middle of the desert and it's usually a 100+++ degs and it all sand)......you ask me, these BLM agents had more zeal than common sense.

Now back to PFD's and common sense, I know when to and who will wear a PFD and at what time, I don't like the idea of a law that says I have to wear one at all time when I'm on my boat, my dink or my kayak, I can guarantee you some overly zealous LEO will cite you when you run to the pumpout station, fuel dock or haulout without your vest on, you'll get cited for putt'n around the marina or going to another boat for a visit in your dink without your vest on and you'll get cited for simply exploring around in your kayak without your vest on

If LEA's showed a little common sense when implementing their enforcement I might feel a bit different about it


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## davidpm (Oct 22, 2007)

It is already mandatory if you are a Coasty. 
Of course they don't have near the common sense or skills of sailnetters.

I've got a stimulus package amendment.
Any boater over 50 gets an automatic 2,000 tax credit as long as they promise to only wear a life jacket if they think they need it.

If some actuary was to run the numbers I suspect it would save significantly on health care. All these old farts living too long having triple bypass surgery and home health care. Let em walk off and dock and save us some money.
It's got to work, every month in "Soundings" one or more guys takes the permanent big drink. Almost everyone is over 50, has been boating for over 30 years and "was a wonderful guy and just loved the water", and was not wearing a life jacket. 
Problem solved. They already have the law for kids. Just raise the age limit to 49 and actually pay the old farts to off themselves.

PS.
I am 58 and I'm channeling Smack Daddy.


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## zeehag (Nov 16, 2008)

davidpm said:


> It is already mandatory if you are a Coasty.
> Of course they don't have near the common sense or skills of sailnetters.
> 
> I've got a stimulus package amendment.
> ...


LOL watch who ye call old pharte. old pharte LOL!!!!!--only a life jacket and nothing else??????? LOL


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## peikenberry (Apr 26, 2000)

> Originally Posted by *davidpm*
> _It is already mandatory if you are a Coasty. _
> _Of course they don't have near the common sense or skills of sailnetters_


And be careful what you say. Some of us Coasties ARE sailnetters!

I might add, I have never heard anyone complain about a coasties seamanship when they have just had their ass pulled out of the drink!


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

davidpm said:


> It is already mandatory if you are a Coasty.
> Of course they don't have near the common sense or skills of sailnetters.


Nor do they have much of a choice being Government employees, hell, I'm sure they'd have their heads handed to them if they go outside without the bonet

BTW; it's a FCC violation to channel Smacky 5pm


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

poopdeckpappy said:


> Don't get wrong, I agree that seatbelts, Helmets and PFD's would/do/will save lives, but the enforcement is wacked
> 
> example;
> 
> My dad taught me to drive @12, by the time I was 14 I was driving solo if needed, back then seatbelts weren't mandatory but I was told to use my head when driving and that meant using the belt when driving, weather and visual condition warranted it's use, which I did up till early 2000




I'm always impressed when people somehow "know" when something like a seatbelt is going to be warranted. When I was a kid (40 years ago), I drove down to the factory with mom to pick up dad after his shift. A drunk driver came around the corner and t-boned us. I guess I just didn't know conditions warranted a seat belt, because when we got hit, I got rocketed around the inside of that car like a pinball. So I wear one because I just never know when drunk-driver conditions will warrant. A friend was saved by a seatbelt because someone in a pickup ran a stop sign and caved in the side of his car. Where I live, I never know when a deer is going to run out in front of my car. 
As for pfds, I still don't want a law telling me it's mandatory to wear one on my keelboat, but I wear it when I'm mucking around on deck because I'm useless at predicting the moment it might become necessary. For me, that's mainly when something totally unexpected happens that could cause me to end up in the water, and my wife has to get the boat turned around and pick me up. Last season I was fiddling with a downhaul line on the boom. The snap shackle at the mast base let go as I was pulling as I stood on the cabin and I just about launched myself backwards over the side of the boat. No predicting that.
Incidentally, while I have a safety harness, I only use the tether when I'm in the cockpit and can snap into the toe rail. Whenever I've tried to figure out where to put jack lines on my 27 footer, all I see is lines that I'll probably trip over and cause me to fall overboard.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

You said: "do I have the freedom to cut your irresponsible fecking throats to save the five million bucks wasted on keeping your stupid husk alive?"
Yes, you do. Or rather, you _would _if you exercised the obligations and rights of a citizen more strenuously.

And I replied:
*
Trust me, no one will vote in my "Attila the Hun" Party.*

I wear seat belts because they seemed like a good idea, and because I've learned that I can walk out of what used to be a car if I do so. I wear a PFD because I love the water--and know it can outlast me. And I wear a bicycle helmet because a friend of mine got knocked down in a major biking rally many years ago, when helmets still came in one color (White) from one maker (Bell) and he spent several weeks in the hospital after his head slid into a curb stone.
On the other hand, I never wore one skiing and simply continue to believe that I won't be aiming for the trees.
*
The Sonny Bono "I Got You, Tree" option.*

I think people should have the freedom of choise to wear these things or not. And in any rational society, they would have that freedom while the rest of us were not forced to be responsible for them. For instance, there's a section at the base of most seat belts that deforms in an impact, so you can tell if they've been used. Slam into a pole, and the "witness" in the car says you weren't using your seat belt? Then your insurer should have the option of offering you a policy that says "No belt, no coverage" at a different price from the "belt, coverage, we pay" policy.

*Except we don't live in a rational society. The prevailing attitude seems to be "I don't want to protect myself from my poor decisions, and I reserve the right to sue others for my poor decisions." *

IT CAN BE DONE. And if not perfectly, at least done fairly well. You don't want to wear a PFD? A seat belt, a helmet? Great, sign a release and put it on an open national record. And when someone bags you & tags you, they can check the list and say "Ooops, no coverage on this one. He signed the list." Maybe that means no care, maybe it means cash care. All the rest is trivial--once someone forces the law to recognize individual freedom and responsibility and end the socialist facism.
*
1) This will never work because human beings of the Western World phenotype are, when taken as a group, whiny, self-entitled sucks who believe the "system" owes them for every little boo-boo, and 2) If your "freedom" to not wear a seatbelt means my kid is killed or maimed by your body exiting at speed through the windshield of your wrecked car, where do I turn to pay for the funeral or critical care for decades? It's like if you don't clip on a kill switch toggle and you fall out of the boat...your tender and outboard could easily plow at speed into a swimming area, making human soup.

Your "sign a waiver" theory breaks down if your unsafe choices lead to the injury or death of others, or to the easily avoidable destruction of property.*


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

poopdeckpappy said:


> Damn, I missed the post where a stupid husk said he would NOT wear a PFD, though I did see a few that said they would wear or insist that a PFD be worn if & when the conditions and or crew member ( regardless of age )warranted it's use.
> 
> I also got the impression that many don't like or need every aspect of their life dictated to them simple because it's good for the whole
> 
> ...


1) My boat has 30 inch high rails, not a 24 inch lifeline.

2) Why don't I have my boarding ladder deployed?

3) Why don't I swim for it?

4) My vest has a whisrle and a strobe. Can I not attract attention?

5) Why can't I climb up the anchor chain?

Now, assuming this isn't MY boat, and I'm Joe Average Low Lifeline 30-footer, I would STILL prefer to be the guy they found dead from hypothermia than the guy who sank to the bottom in nine feet of silt, only to bob up when the decomp gases float me the next spring. Dead is dead, but having a body to burn or bury is better than the uncertainty of no body at all.

As for survival suits in sheltered harbours, no, of course not, unless it's night, it's stormy and the deck's slippery as hell. Then, sure.

You can't protect people from either themselves OR every situation that arises. I don't tie off ladders every freakin' time, either. But I wear my PFD when solo sailing consistently, because I nearly killed myself once when I wasn't wearing one, and because falling off a moving boat under AP is really poor seamanship that could endanger others just as surely as bailing out of a car on the highway set to cruise control.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

knothead said:


> I know for a fact that there are a lot of people who think that taking a small sailing vessel to sea and subjecting one's self to the whims of nature, especially with a family, is the epitome of stupidity.
> 
> What say we let the majority decide if we should be allowed the freedom to pursue our chosen lifestyle. How bout it?


Don't get me started. Ban NASCAR, the Indy and driving over 25 MPH first, maybe.

Am I coming off as pro-regulation? Not necessarily at all. I am pro do whatever you want, _especially _if it kills the stupid...the species needs a good culling as it is. However, much as the old "your right to swing your fists stops at my nose" argument, I want to be protected from the foreseeable consequences of your actions, but no Western democracy, upon reviving a drowned and half-brain-dead powerboater who rolled and lost, would sanction finishing the job on the basis that keeping the body on a ventilator for years was a waste of money.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

davidpm said:


> PS.
> I am 58 and I'm channeling Smack Daddy.


It's an excellent imitation. Now you know where some of my "modest proposals" come from. It's the same thing here: older guys who never wear a PFD and who supposed have vast experience drown, usually in May or June's chilly waters, because the odds catch up with them. Would they die anyway? Maybe. But some of these guys live just long enough to stop treading water before the crew can pull them out. A PFD might not have kept them alive, but it might have kept them floating after the shock took hold.

Anyway, sure: "He died doing what he loved!"


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## Boasun (Feb 10, 2007)

Hey Guys! Those of us who work in dangerous occupations Know that all of the safety rules are written in someones blood. How many drownings before most you wake up and start wearing some form of a life vest?


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

How dare you challenge the freedom to drown? Do you hate America?   

Warming the beds of sailors' widows is a fine, long-standing tradition, anyway, and I love tradition.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

Valiente said:


> How dare you challenge the freedom to drown? Do you hate America?
> 
> Warming the beds of sailors' widows is a fine, long-standing tradition, anyway, and I love tradition.


I'm with Valiente on his series of posts. I hadn't thought about the widow bed-warming, but there you go.
As for deploying swim ladders: I cruise with an autistic son who is 15, probably smarter than the rest of us put together, but who makes life exciting with his rigid protocols. (By the by, he knows he can only be in the cockpit, on deck, or in the dinghy if he's wearing his pfd. He actually wears it constantly, even on shore, once he has it on. He's pretty sensitive about clothing, but the pfd doesn't bug him at all.) His big rule this year was that the swim ladder has to be deployed all the time. I bargained with him into accepting that it would be deployed only when we're at anchor (which it is anyway), or back at dock. This worked for me because leaving your boarding ladder down when in a marina or club is a good safety measure, even though we have steel ladders at the end of every other slip. We put them in at our club after one member slipped and fell in and had no way to get back out of the water. Someone happened along and found him fairly exhausted. A suprising and distressing number of boaters die this way. A couple years ago a man and his grandson drowned at a club or marina in Oakville, Ont. I believe the conclusion was that the boy fell in, granddad went in after him, and neither could figure out how to get back out of the water. (Cold water could have been a factor too.)


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

Ok, I'm still against making it mandatory, however, some really interesting comments and senarios have been made. So, do I wear my vest ? *YES*, do I wear it all the time ? *NO*, Can I see the future ? *NO*, should I wear my vest more regardless of condition because I can't see the future ?, probably not a bad idea

Nice job guys


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## mgmhead (Jan 14, 2007)

So here's my answer to the question "Should wearing a life jacket be mandatory?" No, it should not be required by law for adults who should be old enough to be responsible for their own actions.

That said, I'm a tightwad and after having spent a couple hundred dollars each for the pfd-s on my boat...I'd be pretty damn mad at myself if the "comfortable, self-inflating" pfd was still on the boat and I was in the water. 

The rule on my boat...when underway everyone wears a pfd. Kids also wear one while walking the docks or when on deck, even if we are in the slip or at anchor.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

poopdeckpappy said:


> Ok, I'm still against making it mandatory, however, some really interesting comments and senarios have been made. So, do I wear my vest ? *YES*, do I wear it all the time ? *NO*, Can I see the future ? *NO*, should I wear my vest more regardless of condition because I can't see the future ?, probably not a bad idea
> 
> Nice job guys


Good to hear back


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## PorFin (Sep 10, 2007)

In my view, it's a question of risk assessment and abatement. I know how well I can swim, and when water conditions (temperature, sea state, etc.) will overcome my ability to stay afloat. The likelihood of being knocked unconscious is also part of the equation. Taken together with an honest consideration of how long I can expect to be wet before recovery, it's not rocket science to elect to wear a PFD when *conditions* warrant it *for me*.

Of course, the problem with mandated safety laws is that they are designed around worst case conditions and the lowest common denominator. This in inherently intrusive and offensive.

Although it makes little sense to require a strong swimmer to wear a PFD while lounging at the pool, there's that one 8-year old kid in a hundred thousand who slips while running pool-side (which he shouldn't have been doing in the first place), conks his noggin, and falls in. The lifeguard is chatting up the teenyboppers, and of course Mom is on the phone chatting with Gramma and didn't notice Junior heading for the bottom. A tragedy? Yes. Preventable? Absolutely. Do we then mandate that everyone within five feet of poolside wear PFDs? Seems like overkill to me.


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## mccary (Feb 24, 2002)

OK, time to weigh in on this... My hard rules:
1. ALL children wear PFD ALL the time on the boat, & dock.
2. I wear my auto inflatable whenever I am alone or weather is bad.
3. I ask ALL guests if they can swim for 15 minutes and if they want a PFD.

Case in point, today I moved my boat 4 miles to a marina to have some work done. The wind was nearly dead calm and I motored. Not exactly like being on the fore-deck of a Volvo 70 but still I wore my PFD (alone).


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

Mccary, you and I agree on this. Alone, I wear it even motoring, because if I haven't cinched my mainsheet well enough, some tool on a jetski could send a wake my way and I could get conked overboard. Being a strong swimmer (if it's above about 18C/64F!) wouldn't help me if I was stunned. Auto-inflate might.

Last week I went out with another guy and had a great, light-to-medium air sail. I kept the PFD off, but in the cockpit. The "gusts" were pretty weak, but I had to make a few sharp moves to avoid other dopey sailors. I shouted "hold on!" to the other guy, who did, but if he had been at the helm and had not given me the same heads-up, I could have fallen in. So I wore the PFD when taking "the captain's privilege" when we were far away from other boats. I think drowning with your junk in your hand and a surprised look on your face is a trifle undignified, personally, but a few sailors seem to do it every year.


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## St Anna (Mar 15, 2003)

I personally agree with Val, but here is another arguement to throw into the ring.

The old salts did not bother to learn to swim as it just prolonged the inevitible. Offshore cruisers are divided but there are those who still believe the same. One pair I am thinking of, dont want to stay around floating for hours/days until they die. Make it quick.


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

'The old salts did not bother to learn to swim as it just prolonged the inevitible."
That was also part of an old naval tradition. If your crew didn't know how to swim--that meant they would do everything they could to keep the ship afloat and victorious.
Sound logic, enduring tradition.


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## eMKay (Aug 18, 2007)

No. 

/thread.


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## Boasun (Feb 10, 2007)

hellosailor said:


> 'The old salts did not bother to learn to swim as it just prolonged the inevitible."
> That was also part of an old naval tradition. If your crew didn't know how to swim--that meant they would do everything they could to keep the ship afloat and victorious.
> Sound logic, enduring tradition.


That is not quite right. What really happened was that the sailors refused to go into the water because; It is ccccold and there are big mean fishies that'll eat you. No siree I'is staying on the ship! No way you can get me to go into that water. :laugher


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## miatapaul (Dec 15, 2006)

Valiente said:


> Next door to us is a relatively famous and solidly successful jazz musician (not a contradiction in terms in his case). He actually makes a decent living playing and recording. We both live on a fairly major and old inner city street with streetcar tracks. It's narrow to the point that the space between a parked car and a streetcar is maybe just over a metre (four feet or so). You can get "door prized" very easily in such a situation.
> 
> I saw him with his six-year-old daughter on a rear-wheel carrier seat of his bicycle (like me, they don't own a car). She was strapped in and helmeted. He was wearing a pork pie hat (remember, he's a cool jazz musician, right?)
> 
> ...


I got hit by a car on a bike, and was wearing a helmet. I slid for at least 30 feet as a tripod, my gloved hands and my head on the road and did not suffer any lasting injury's. Just some scrapped fingers and a leg that got some road rash. This was in 84 so it was before they were common. I don't think it saved my life, but I was only 10 min late to my college class that day, instead of weeks or months in the hospital. The maker of the helmet offered me a free replacement, and I said, no I want to keep this as a reminder to always ware one.

Should it be mandatory, no I like to think of it as natural selection. Just don't make me pay the medical costs for someone that is brain dead after almost drowning. But if someone is stupid enough to hang out on a small (less than a hundred feet) moving vessel without one they would likely do society a favor to stop living. (and I am as left wing as they come, just some people are not worth saving)


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## smackdaddy (Aug 13, 2008)

Valiente said:


> I didn't regularly wear a helmet until after the mid-80s. I was a bike courier, a fast, dangerous job akin to playing badminton on a high-wire.


Val, I gotta say - you've gotta a whole lotta cool going on. Bike courier?


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## smackdaddy (Aug 13, 2008)

poopdeckpappy said:


> So, when they finally find your half eaten but still floating body several days later and determine that you died within a few minutes of hypothremia, shall we mandate that EVERYONE is to wear a survival suit and boarding ladders MUST be deployed while at anchorage ???


Poop, you nailed it.

There is no universally acceptable level of "safe". Use your head. And if, in the mean time, you drown...don't milk it.


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## Siamese (May 9, 2007)

Mandatory use of lifejackets would only save a few lives. If you really want to save lives, make the wearing of full coverage helmets mandatory in all passenger cars. THAT would save lives. 

To anyone who thinks it's a good idea to make lifejackets mandatory, tell me why my helmet idea doesn't make more sense.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

smackdaddy said:


> There is no universally acceptable level of "safe". Use your head. .


Yeah but, by the priggishness of a recent post it appears that using one's head is a incomprehenisble concept


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

Further to my position that on a keelboat the decision to wear a pfd should be mine alone, I had the pleasure of racing on a custom 50-footer on Wednesday night. Eight of us were in the crew, and the wind was light (5-10 true) in a course race (not offshore quality). Early in the race I looked around and saw only one of us, the bowman, was wearing a pfd. (We all brought our own.) I guess we all decided the conditions and general competence of our fellow yachties made wearing one unnecessary. 
Now, if I'd been cruising in that machine shorthanded, I would have had on a pfd, a harness and tether, a mountaineering helmet, and my dental records would have been taped to the nav station...


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

Siamese said:


> Mandatory use of lifejackets would only save a few lives. If you really want to save lives, make the wearing of full coverage helmets mandatory in all passenger cars. THAT would save lives.
> 
> To anyone who thinks it's a good idea to make lifejackets mandatory, tell me why my helmet idea doesn't make more sense.


I made the point in the post that started this thread that making all boaters were pfds makes as much sense as making everyone in motor vehicles wear helmets because motorcyclists are prone to head injuries. My point has been since then that SOME vessels could do with mandatory wear, just the way motorcylists are in most jurisdictions. It would save lives by targeting the smaller craft most prone to accidental drownings, and are craft in which you should be wearing one already (if for no other reason than in a vessel like a kayak the only place to store a pfd is on your body). Sailing dinghies, jetskis, sailboards, canoes, kayaks, small open runabouts, tenders, just put the thing on. If the law says so as well, I'm not going to complain. Cars already have mandatory seatbelt wear and airbags on newer models. Boats have the odd situation of rules requiring pfds to be carried but not to be worn, with policing agencies then spending money on promotional campaigns year over year to encourage people to put them on. Just say ya gotta put em on, for smaller craft. That also removes the annoying and invasive experience of being pulled over to be checked for pfds in inspections that always target small craft. (But I have a feeling the inspections will go on, often on the pretext of checking for other mandatory equipment when what they're really interested in is finding alcohol.)
The Canadian Red Cross recently published a study of a decade of drowning stats (1991-2000) involving vessels and found that small powerboats (less than 5.5 meters long) produced 38 percent of all recreational drownings. Almost half of those small-powerboat drownings involved recreational fishing. Canoes contributed another whopping 22 percent of recreational drownings. Sailboats of all kinds produced just four percent. Recreational powerboats greater than 5.5 meters accounted for only 6 percent. (Another 13 percent of recreational drownings, though were powerboats of unspecified size.) So if you target the small powerboats and canoes, you've already addressed 60 percent of drowning incidents. Covering off the rest of the small craft fills in most of the rest. Do that, and you can leave the extremely low-risk cruising boaters alone to make their own decisions on what safety measures are appropriate and when.
Let me be clear: I'm not trying to start a regulatory movement. I'm trying to respond productively to a fairly serious initiative in Canada to extend mandatory wear to all boats and boaters, which is backed by the Ontario Provincial Police after a rash of drownings. I can abide regs that target specific above-mentioned vessels. A guy fishing in a 14-foot aluminum boat while anchored should be wearing a pfd, because he's standing up and casting. Having a blanket reg for all vessels would require a guy making sandwiches in the galley of a 45-foot yacht at anchor to wear one as well, and that would be ridiculous.
Some will argue this is a slippery slope towards mandatory wear in all vessels at all times. Life is full of slopes that look slippery. Some we slide on, some we don't.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

St Anna said:


> I personally agree with Val, but here is another arguement to throw into the ring.
> 
> The old salts did not bother to learn to swim as it just prolonged the inevitible. Offshore cruisers are divided but there are those who still believe the same. One pair I am thinking of, dont want to stay around floating for hours/days until they die. Make it quick.


If I didn't have a PLB, a strobe and a laser flare, I'd want to make it quick, too.

But I have these things for ocean travel (I only have a strobe on in Lake Ontario, because I carry a submersible VHF and can probably reach shore or another boat if I fell off my boat while solo sailing).

The possibility of rescue today is exponentially greater than even during the Second World War (my father was in the British Merchant Marine and said that the odds of being rescued from a torpedoed freighter were very poor due to the cold water). Today, a survival suit and PFD could keep you floating for days, and people are picked up today having fallen off oil rigs, downed planes, etc. We know more about currents and how to find people. The odds are much better.


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

poopdeckpappy said:


> Yeah but, by the priggishness of a recent post it appears that using one's head is a incomprehenisble concept


To be fair, we are raising a generation of children with little experience of physical danger, because we've made the world perhaps a little too safe. Without any kind of experential scale against which a young person can measure peril, one can't expect them to "use their heads". It is exactly such heads that have never gotten a goose-egg, never mind a set of stitches.

I was hit by a car as a kid, fell out of the back of a pickup on a dirt road, sported scabby knees and elbows most summers, jumped off garage roofs into hardening snowbanks, and climbed numerous rusty TV towers, invaded various construction sites, and played with matches, knives, rusty nails and limited amounts of explosives all through my lightly supervised childhood. My knowledge of inertia, gravity and action/reaction was instinctual before it was theoretical. Hell, we didn't even have _seatbelts _until my dad bought a '68 VW Bug. Imagine two little unbelted kids wrestling in the back seat of a car today: Children's Services would cart them off to foster homes.

By contrast, today's kids are bused or driven most places, are padded from scraps, forbidden to chuck snowballs, and few of them seem to be capable of climbing a tree. Even my own kid, who is rarely driven anywhere, and climbs trees, doesn't get injured "enough". He wiped out his bike yesterday and scraped his knee and got a handlebar in the guts, and cried loud and long (I thought he'd caught it in the testicles...but no...). My wife said yesterday, hours afterward, that a subsequent fit of bad temper was due to this mid-afternoon event, because "he so rarely falls down that he forgets what it's like to actually get hurt."

Meanwhile, the more popular videos on YouTube show teenagers and even men in their 20s "car-surfing" with the predictable bloody consequences.

Common sense isn't common. It's more like an elite club you get to join if you are allowed to learn physics via mild injury. If you aren't allowed to hurt yourself, you don't get to learn what is likely going to be a dangerous activity.

No wonder kids think they are Superman. If you've never been hurt, you might assume you were invulnerable, too.


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

Once you even CONSIDER discussing mandatory safety, like wearing PFDs, you have opened the door on a very dangerous topic. If I can force you to "behave safer" by wearing a PFD, I should be able to force you to behave "more safer" still by simply banning recreational boating. There's no need for it, no excuse for it, just end recreational boating and you'd end all boating deaths and accidents and BWI all at the same time.

And, you'd do great things for the ecology.

So just remember, a vote for mandatory PFDS, even for the minor children of idiots, is a vote to end all recreational boating.


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## poopdeckpappy (Jul 25, 2006)

That was a great post valiente, I too learned the theory of inertia, gravity and action/reaction though the same school. ( and wouldn't have it any other way ) Reading between the lines ( of your posts ) I understand that the campus and curriculum of this new school ( which I enrolled full time in 4yrs ago ) may not be as hard, but the mistakes may not be as forgiving; As I said previously, I wear my vest, but not always, after reading comments form you, Bosun and others I will wear it more.

Funny how peer pressure over regulations changes the minds


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

One of the things researchers in animal behavior have come to realize (read Temple Grandin's new Animals in Translation) is that the old model of learning through trial and error is false. If gazelles learned how close they could come to a bunch of lions by wandering up to them, there would be no gazelles left, and no lions either, because they would have eaten all the gazelles and have nothing left for dinner. The brainy science people now recognize that animals learn fundamentally by example, by watching other animals. Behaviors that aren't hardwired into the genes get passed on from generation to generation this way, so hard (unsurvivable) lessons of trial and error don't have to be repeated by every new arrival. 
We don't have to almost drown to learn lessons about personal safety. We just have to observe and listen to others who are still walking around on the planet, and take note of what happened to people who aren't anymore. I've got three kids, and have gotten two of them to adulthood without expecting them to do all dumbass things I did when I was young.


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## smackdaddy (Aug 13, 2008)

Good point Diva. That's precisely why I believe that we should push to make helmets and life vests mandatory for gazelles at all times.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

On a more practical note, I just found the chart of state laws where mandatory use of PFDs is concerned. Surprising how many states have an age-based law targeting kids, and many states make them mandatory for anyone operating certain types of vessels, especially PWCs but often canoes, rowboats etc. District of Columbia is fairly elaborate. And if you're ever in American Samoa, everyone has to wear one, or face a $1,000 fine. So it looks like Soviet Canuckistan is lagging its freedom-loving American neighbors on this front.
The link is here.
NASBLA - The National Association of State Boating Law Administrators


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## hellosailor (Apr 11, 2006)

Diva-
"We don't have to almost drown to learn lessons about personal safety."
Well, there are more and more folks each year that just don't seem to have any concept of "situational awareness" at any time. Heck, they'd just pitch a tent in the middle of a freeway when there was no traffic, and never think to look over the concrete for tire marks before they did.
When I was a kid, everyone knew (KNEW) someone who had fallen down stairs when roller skates or something else were left on them. We learned not to leave things on stairs because we'd observed the results, directly or indirectly. We also learned not to use glass for room dividers, kitchen cabinet doors (canned goods fall through them and shower someone with glass), or those big patio doors, after seeing, hearing, or experiencing hospital visits from them.
But today? Folks don't see/hear the damage, so they're back to doing the dangerous things. Like, using a cell phone _while _ drinking and driving.

You can't legislate common sense, you can only impose "british school boy" standards and punish everyone for the failure of the one guilty party. I'd rather let the ones who can't figure it out drown, and charge their estates for the longer SAR costs.

I wear my PFD because I just really don't want to have fish and crabs pick my bones clean. I've got a union contract with the worms.


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## davidpm (Oct 22, 2007)

hellosailor said:


> So just remember, a vote for mandatory PFDS, even for the minor children of idiots, is a vote to end all recreational boating.


While your passion and knowledge of boating is significant this kind of comment is a classic slippery slope argument.

You could use the same argument in almost any context.
It assumes that once someone or some group takes one action they are inevitable going to go to extremes.
This is simply not the case as individuals and as groups we have the ability to take appropriate action.
Of course you were probably just having fun with us.

PS:
I'm on your side. I think peer pressure is more appropriate than legislation. I would love to see all sail-net members wear their PF D's when on the dock.
Wouldn't it be great if it became so uncool to be on the boat without a PFD that if you were clearing the channel buoy and the 20 year old on the J22 hollered out PFD instead of fenders as he barreled past you.

A List Of Fallacious Arguments


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## barnakiel (Aug 23, 2009)

It should not be obligatory. But it is so easy for a government to make ridiculous laws rather than tack the real issues (like e.g. notorious breaking of the speed limit / passing distance by boaters).

However, it is a very, very good practice to use them any time and in any circumstances there is a risk of falling overboard.

b.


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## Diva27 (Nov 2, 2007)

Hey, it's one o'clock on a Sunday afternoon: what am I doing typing on a sailing bulletin board about sailing, when I should be sailing? 
Wind here is light out of the NW, overcast, might rain.
I'm going sailing.And I'll wear my pfd, even on the dock


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## Valiente (Jun 16, 2006)

poopdeckpappy said:


> That was a great post valiente, I too learned the theory of inertia, gravity and action/reaction though the same school. ( and wouldn't have it any other way ) Reading between the lines ( of your posts ) I understand that the campus and curriculum of this new school ( which I enrolled full time in 4yrs ago ) may not be as hard, but the mistakes may not be as forgiving; As I said previously, I wear my vest, but not always, after reading comments form you, Bosun and others I will wear it more.
> 
> Funny how peer pressure over regulations changes the minds


Well, I can just as easily take the contrarian/libertarian viewpoint and call for NO safety regs and let physics and Darwin remove the unsafe boaters from the gene pool. The trouble with that is, of course, that third parties or innocent guests can suffer for the poor decisions of the skipper to say "to hell with PFDs, flares, bailers and running blowers...no guvmint's gonna tell me what to (BBBOOOOOMMMM!!!!).

Imagine being securely tethered to a nearby sailboat, PFD on, MMSI coded into the DSC handheld, crisp new flares clearly at the ready underneath a bulkhead full of safety placards...and being brained by the pieces of the former _S/V John Galt_ as gravity delivers its final verdict.

I fully support and indeed advocate the right of individuals to kill themselves by ignoring basic safety precepts, but it rarely stops there.


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