Would mandatory licensing change things?

[evm1024]

Originally Posted by Pete17C

Ok smartypants, you're in line waiting your turn at a 4 way intersection with stop signs on each corner, all roads are backed up a few cars deep. The car ahead of your clears through and you finally get to the stop sign. There are three cars already waiting at their respective stop signs.

When do you get to go?

After those three cars (respecting time of arrival at the intersection)?

or after everyone on your right has cleared through?

No need to to call me smartypants. We can converse at a higher level than that.

So I see you have raised the bar from 2 cars at a 4 way intersection to a queue at an intersection.

That's OK.

To answer you - Neither.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by StuM

Which is why vessels "engaged in fishing" in accordance with the COLREGs definition are required to display day shapes/lights (but that's a whole other thread )
I don't see any cones displayed on the powerboat in the picture under discussion.

If he was actively involved in fishing i want to know what species you troll for ay over 20knots. ( i estimated by how far they went in crossing over the sailboat. )

[transmitterdan]

Aligning boating education to flying certifications is bordering on absurd. Almost nobody dies when your engines stop. You can’t immolate hundreds of innocent people in a recreational boat accident.

If training reduced risk of boating accident then insurance company actuarial tables would take it into account. What % off your insurance can you get with various certifications and proof of training? Not much. That tells you a lot about the benefit of certifications.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by transmitterdan

If training reduced risk of boating accident then insurance company actuarial tables would take it into account. What % off your insurance can you get with various certifications and proof of training? Not much. That tells you a lot about the benefit of certifications.

my certification cards from the navy get me a 10% deduction in my liability coverage .

( small boat engineer )

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by newhaul

my certification cards from the navy get me a 10% deduction in my liability coverage .

( small boat engineer )

Three masters tickets get me about 15% which is substantial (to me) when you add up the additional riders for cruising Canada to Bahamas and Cuba.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by boatpoker

Three masters tickets get me about 15% which is substantial (to me) when you add up the additional riders for cruising Canada to Bahamas and Cuba.

agreed it adds up.

[s/v Jedi]

Reading this thread suggests that at least half of you should be taken off the water and moved to a beautiful oasis somewhere in the middle of a huge desert, far far away from the sea

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Reading this thread suggests that at least half of you should be taken off the water and moved to a beautiful oasis somewhere in the middle of a huge desert, far far away from the sea

I'm getting to like you more and more

[Pete17C]

Originally Posted by evm1024

No need to to call me smartypants. We can converse at a higher level than that.

So I see you have raised the bar from 2 cars at a 4 way intersection to a queue at an intersection.

That's OK.

To answer you - Neither.

So, I'm a "bold sailor" (we know what happens to them) but you're not sure what you'd do at a crowded four way intersection?

/so it was you I was stuck behind in traffic the other day
//the rules apply in all situations
///let me know when you, and the guy on your right, and the guy on his right, etc, figure a way out of my hypothetical intersection when you all arrived at 'approximately the same time'
////and by hypothetical, I mean happens often in real life

[evm1024]

Originally Posted by Pete17C

So, I'm a "bold sailor" (we know what happens to them) but you're not sure what you'd do at a crowded four way intersection?

/so it was you I was stuck behind in traffic the other day
//the rules apply in all situations
///let me know when you, and the guy on your right, and the guy on his right, etc, figure a way out of my hypothetical intersection when you all arrived at 'approximately the same time'

I see that you feel insulted and would rather fight than use your head. So be it.

You presented a hypothetical scenario and offered up only 2 solutions, neither of which are correct. Surely, you do know how to handle the intersection and thus I can only conclude that you would rather.... And there is no need to.

The queued up intersection appears to alternate but in reality the car yielded to rotates. But it is really more complex than that.

As an example from the MN drivers manual:

1) If each car arrived at a different time, then they leave in the order in which they arrived. To repeat: Leave in the order in which you got there.

2) If two vehicles arrive at the same time, the driver on the left defers to the driver on the right. In other words: The driver on the right goes first.

3) If two vehicles arrive at the same time and one of them is signaling a turn across the path of the other, then the one who is not turning has right of way.

4) If you had to wait in a line at the intersection to get to the stop sign, this does not change anything. Each car stops and then follows the above rules as if no one else had been in line before him. (In other words, you can’t conclude that you were there before the person at the other intersection just because the car in front of you was there before him or her.)

5) If you are at a T-intersection with a 3-way stop, the vehicle that does not have to turn has right of way.

[jmschmidt]

US government agencies are very reluctant to give practical tests for anything anymore because their lawyers have scared the poop out of them over the potential liability. The FAA no longer gives basic certificate check rides for private pilots up to airline transport pilots, nor for rating upgrades (instrument, multi-engine, etc.) or even type ratings for the largest civil transport aircraft. The airlines and flight schools do their own certification by using company check airmen and instructors qualified as "designee examiners" for all certifications. FAA inspectors qualify the designee examiners and the examiners do the real work in the airplane or simulator. The FAA doesn't want any part of signing off what might turn out to be a marginal pilot.

The US Coast Guard has never set up a system like the FAA for insolating the agency from legal liability. It might not ever be possible or workable. Previously the USCG did give practical, in-water qualification testing for licenses but no more.

Other countries that don't have so many lawyers' mouths to feed may still be doing practical testing for mariners. Nobody wants to stand the jerk if something goes wrong. I don't and I trained hundreds of pilots. I let my CFI/AI Multi, check airman status expire decades ago.

[Jason Flare]

I see a huge value in crappy boaters and crappy drivers.

Take the four way stop. If everybody was a responsible driver everyone would stop at the stop sign. As soon as it was common for everyone to always stop at the stop signs it would become a green light to someone and that someone would take advantage and blow through their stop sign knowing everyone else was going to stop.

(Before you get mad at this guy who blew through the stop sign maybe he had a medical emergency. Maybe he was rushing his little daughter to the hospital and seconds counted. The point being, he was living in a world with responsible drivers who all stopped for the stop signs when he blew through it.)

Crappy drivers, and drivers blowing through stop signs on their way to the hospital, keep me on my toes because what I’m really looking out for while driving is the crappy driver; someone changing lanes along side of me, someone blowing a red light, someone pulling out in front of me, someone not stopping at a four way stop intersection.

Crappy boaters do me favor since, in the perfect world where all the bad boaters are shipped out into an oasis in the desert, (By the way, thank you for the “oasis” part of being shipped out to the desert, it sounds very nice,) you perfect boaters would become so complacent without the crappy boaters and so “not on your toes” that you’d probably spend all your time down below making coffee and I need you up on the bridge with the autopilot turned off and on your toes watching out for crappy boaters.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by jmschmidt

The FAA doesn't want any part of signing off what might turn out to be a marginal pilot.

The US Coast Guard has never set up a system like the FAA for insolating the agency from legal liability. It might not ever be possible or workable. Previously the USCG did give practical, in-water qualification testing for licenses but no more.

Other countries that don't have so many lawyers' mouths to feed...I let my CFI/AI Multi, check airman status expire decades ago.

I'm a designated examiner, thinking about letting it go now, but I wouldn't blame the lawyers per se. My FAA handlers are almost exclusively ex-military lifer types that spent an entire career in the military having either zero authority to make individual decisions vs maintaining little critical thinking skills (always having the ability to fall back on a manual that was written back in 1946 as an acceptable practice). They will certainly blame lawyers, the CNN factor/public mandate, whatever. But you can't help but note they're minimally competent to work in private industry (and I'm not a govt basher).

Anyone without technical expertise attending an intl conference attended by FAA and international partners can witness...even without having technical expertise...how really out of touch FAA is. It's really embarrassing/shameful hearing the criticism in the coffee hall between presentations.

Hall B: 910am. FAA "How we've dealt with the rise in XYZ incidents"
Hall B: 950am. EASA "What we've accomplished 5 years after eliminating XYZ incidents"

--
I'd other just add that in ancient days, licenses were developed, granted, maintained, and policed by professional organizations without regulatory/govt oversight. Once such organizations lost day-to-day self-policing of license holders, forever the self-policing function was lost. Note here how we can't get people to agree on what is/is not required/acceptable.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Axel_G

In the Netherlands and Germany you need a license for motorboats above 20kmh (Netherlands) or more than 15 hp (Germany) which requires a theoretical and practical test.

At least that seems to help. The Netherlands had very few accidents and I believe even no deaths after an accident in the past years and so did Germany. I couldn't believe the amount of deaths you have in the US.

It's just impossible to compare cross-cultural license/driving/I guess boating experiences. This is an old popular video (volume warning) of Germans responding to an ambulance. You will never see this in the US.

https://youtu.be/02Ak1eIyj3M?t=44

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by Singularity

It's just impossible to compare cross-cultural license/driving/I guess boating experiences. This is an old popular video (volume warning) of Germans responding to an ambulance. You will never see this in the US.

https://youtu.be/02Ak1eIyj3M?t=44

(In Canada either) How very sad and very true.