Mandating Adult Life Jacket Wear

[foggysail]

NO, you cannot poop in the water, YES---- you MUST get a salt water fishing license, YES, you must pay a sales tax/use tax, YES you must pay an excise tax, YES you must register or document your boat. YES you must put many signs in your boat stating you will not dump oil overboard and you will not feed the fish with your leftovers

And YES............ And NO.................... and YES the rules list keeps getting longer.

Government cannot even obey their own laws but now they are passing more laws restricting how we live our lives!

[Kettlewell]

Actually, for those who think people die at night, that is not the case. Most drownings occur in good weather with good visibility. The typical accident is that someone just falls overboard and drowns because they can't swim. As dumb as that sounds, it is what the statistics indicate. Sure, we mainly read about the spectacular accident at night somewhere, but that is not typical. And, many years you can count the number of people who die on larger cruising sailboats in the entire USA on one hand, certainly on two. I should add that a lot more people die falling in the bathroom each year. I really think we need a law to require helmets when you take a shower.

[Bash]

Originally Posted by robertsapp

OK, so let's see if this makes sense. Say this law passes. I leave my boat in my inflatable dinghy to row ashore. I'm not wearing a life jacket. I can be stopped by the Coast Guard and fined. However, if I jump off my boat and swim ashore, it's perfectly legal and there's nothing anyone can say about it. Does anyone besides me see a problem with this?

That's a fabulous argument.

[Bash]

Clearly, we need a better understanding of the demographics of drowning. The two groups most prone to drowning are toddlers and teenagers. Of the later group, drowning victims are more than three times more likely to be male, and somewhere around sixty percent of teenage drownings involve the consumption of alcohol.

A mandatory PFD law will not ameliorate the drowning rate among toddlers or teenagers.

Forcing codgers like myself to wear life jackets while safely ensconced in the cockpit of our 15-ton sloops really isn't going to save many lives.

[Charlie]

We in the USA have a funny outlook on dying. Death is a part of life. The death of 1 person doesn't amount to much to the world though it does have an impact on individual families. I looked into the PFD issue while planning for our recent trip to Italy. I wanted to get the comfortable inflatable PFD's. They ran from $80 up to over $300. That would have cost me anywhere from $320 to $1,200 to outfit my family. Funny thing is that my daughter is required to wear a PFD even though she is on the Water Polo team and can swim for literally hours. The cost per life saved may seem rather callus but think of it this way. For the price of one PFD $80 we could feed a family of four in drought stricken Africa for quite a longtime The Road to the Horizon: News: 19 cents to feed a child for a day. This website says $0.25 per day. One PFD would support a child for almost a year if I did the math right. I would be much more supportive of a law that required us to feed a child in Africa at $0.25 a day then requiring PFD's for people so that we can stop a few hundred deaths a year. But of course the people in Africa have neither a Visa card nor vote so why pass that legislation?

[Prerequisite]

I'm against the mandatory PFD law- but I'm not against PFDs. I always wear one when I'm in my kayak, even in shallow water. I almost always wear one in a sailing dinghy (the few times I don't are normally when I accidentally leave it on the dock). I rarely wear one on Prerequisite but do when I feel it's appropriate. I feel like I am able to make the decision on my own when a PFD is necessary and don't need the CG to tell me that I have to wear one on a private vessel (full disclosure, I am active duty CG).

I did just get a warning by "the Law" on Sunday though for not having wearable PFDs in my jon boat on the lake behind my house. I always keep throwable devices in the boat and mistakingly thought that would be sufficient- My wife and I decided to go cruise the lake and we left the wearable jackets on the dock. It was hot, the boat is so slow it won't even plane, and we weren't out looking for any type of adventure. Nevertheless, we were stopped by Fish and Wildlife and told we needed wearable jackets in the boat but we didn't need to wear them- we just needed to be able to throw them to whoever fell in. Apparently approved throwable devices aren't good enough for this purpose.

Some laws are just dumb.

[sdowney717]

Some laws are just dumb.

that sounds really dumb.

In law enforcement thinking, it is partially about harassment, these laws are invitations designed to invade your personal space, in your face type of thing. To look for trouble and perhaps provoke a response to ferret out the really bad guys. Thing is I am not typically a bad guy but I am still guilty till proven innocent. That is why the CG can board your boat with high power weapons and look at everything all your private life is exposed.

they may not really care as much about your safety as the safety from the concept of security for society. They look at you as a potential security threat. It is a somewhat uncomfortable feeling. I dont want laws piled on laws on top of more laws. They have regulated everything to the point where everyone is guilty of something and if they want to get you they got you.

I think of the Nazi days where laws were passed to harass, persecute, and eventually destroy unwanted undesirables as an example of how far this could go in a society.
Laws today certainly attempt to destroy undesireable behaviors like using the ocean dumping waste. Just a question of how far or how onerously overburdened the regulations become. A clear example of going overboard would be having a NDZ and boat sanitation requirements and then the cities dump raw sewage in the water.

[psneeld]

Originally Posted by sdowney717

that sounds really dumb.

In law enforcement thinking, it is partially about harassment, these laws are invitations designed to invade your personal space, in your face type of thing. To look for trouble and perhaps provoke a response to ferret out the really bad guys. Thing is I am not typically a bad guy but I am still guilty till proven innocent. That is why the CG can board your boat with high power weapons and look at everything all your private life is exposed.

they may not really care as much about your safety as the safety from the concept of security for society. They look at you as a potential security threat. It is a somewhat uncomfortable feeling. I dont want laws piled on laws on top of more laws. They have regulated everything to the point where everyone is guilty of something and if they want to get you they got you.

I think of the Nazi days where laws were passed to harass, persecute, and eventually destroy unwanted undesirables as an example of how far this could go in a society.
Laws today certainly attempt to destroy undesireable behaviors like using the ocean dumping waste. Just a question of how far or how onerously overburdened the regulations become. A clear example of going overboard would be having a NDZ and boat sanitation requirements and then the cities dump raw sewage in the water.

Totally off base....the guys who are the real push behind law enforcement and boardings at the top don't give a hoot about boating safety. Haveing been one of those guys coming aboard and directing those who came aboard and knowing many many of them...power trips were the RARE few in the USCG.

After 2 years in USCG headquarters...I saw just how divergent some officials agendas are so the policies are probably not related.

[robertsapp]

Well all I can say is, if God forbid the day ever comes where I'm rowing my dinghy ashore and I see a Marine Patrol or CG vessel start to vector in my direction, I'm going to roll over the side, take the painter in my teeth, and start swimming.

[Wavewacker]

Cool, I got a message that this was a hot topic, a kind of post at your own risk thing, I have never seen that on any other site.

Anyway, to my question, if such a law becomes effective, how far off the boat could you get before taking off the PFD? Say I want to swim, I get on my swim platform and take off the PFD and slide in a swim. Did I break the law being on the swim platform? Or, do you need to get in the water and try to take it off and say, tie it to the boat, go swim and when done, put the PDF on while in the water and then board the boat?

That's assuming you can be in the water without a PDF legally.

[Don1500]

Originally Posted by robertsapp

OK, so let's see if this makes sense. Say this law passes. I leave my boat in my inflatable dinghy to row ashore. I'm not wearing a life jacket. I can be stopped by the Coast Guard and fined. However, if I jump off my boat and swim ashore, it's perfectly legal and there's nothing anyone can say about it. Does anyone besides me see a problem with this?

You would not jump in the water in the middle of a lake that is too large for you to swim across. You would not try to swim through a rip current. And you wouldn't try to swim through Hell's Gate. But you will go to all those places with your dink. Just because your not there now can not be a reason to not have a law. Unless you say they should put in white cans with "PFD AREA" in orange letters all over the place.

Laws are for the least common denominator. The 3 year old toddler, the 18 year old show-off, the 35 year old drunk "King of the World", the 70 year old recovering stroke victem. If there were laws that just singled them out the others would need papers to show it didn't apply.

[CaptFrankM]

Actually, Don, I would jump into a lake that I cannot swim across, if I were going swimming. I have jumped in the ocean to go swimming. I understand your point - that being in a dinghy is different than going in the water - and I concur, but it doesn't change the fact that, if you try to make a "one-size-fits-all" rule, it will either be incredibly cumbersome or unenforceable - or both.

Also, I don't think that the people enforcing the rules are on a power trip - or maybe I should say they aren't the ones making the rules. In general, the people that make the rules don't enforce them and the ones enforcing them have very little say in what rules get made (which is why the rules get enforced erratically). However, I believe it is correct that some people in law enforcement do look at these rules as an opportunity to run a power trip - and some people who enforce these rules are really afraid that the next boat they stop is going to have some guy with a sawed off shotgun and a bad attitude - and they don't know which boat that one is, so everyone gets treated as if they are "that guy" until proven otherwise. I't's not a case of "guilty until proven innocent", it's more a case of "lethal until proven otherwise."

Finally, on the subject of where the Coast Guard gest the authority - if I understand the system, the Coast Guard, when it decides a rule is necessary, goes before the appropriate Congressional subcommittee with a request for rulemaking. If they convince the legislators on the committee, the rule gets added to the United States Code (there are more steps, but that's the big picture). So, it is not the Coast Guard making the rule, it is Congress doing so, at the Coast Guard's request. Of course, if you disagree with a rule, you can contact the members of the committee directly, but since the Coast Guard generally goes in with their ducks in a row - even if they are ducks that you or I might disagree with - it's pretty difficult to change the legislation once the CG requests it.

[Therapy]

And here is something else I know will happen and it burns (will burn) me up.

The sunblock we use is really great. We can put in on in the AM and sometimes again after noon (not always depending on activities). The areas of concern are only where something rubs it off. This is the top of knees as shorts rub when getting up and down or walking. Also the the "love handle" area as pants are hitched up sometimes.

If I wore a jacket of any kind all the areas around it would be rubbed free of sun block and would burn. Since there is a lot of upper torso movement when aboard I would burn every time out.

This would really be bad.

[Therapy]

I'm thinking something like this.

Is body paint as good as sunblock?

[Morgan3820]

Originally Posted by Therapy

And here is something else I know will happen and it burns (will burn) me up.

The sunblock we use is really great. We can put in on in the AM and sometimes again after noon (not always depending on activities). The areas of concern are only where something rubs it off. This is the top of knees as shorts rub when getting up and down or walking. Also the the "love handle" area as pants are hitched up sometimes.

If I wore a jacket of any kind all the areas around it would be rubbed free of sun block and would burn. Since there is a lot of upper torso movement when aboard I would burn every time out.

This would really be bad.

Maybe you could apply for an exempton under the Amarican with Disabilities Act?