|
|
|
|
|||||
|
||||||
From: Faure, Marin (no email)
Date: Wed Feb 01 2006 - 19:25:13 EST
>Bill wrote: The longer I cruise, the more I'm thinking licensing boat
drivers might be a good thing (geez.... I hate saying that.).
While my intention is not to start a political or philosophical thread
(although it probably will) I continue to find it amazing that we do not
require formal training and licensing to operate a boat. Virtually
every other piece of reasonably complex machinery requires formal
training at the least, and a testing and licensing procedure otherwise.
Want to drive a car, motorcycle, semi-tractor, plane, railroad
locomotive? You need training and testing to get an operator's
certificate.
But anyone who can arrange financing can buy a 55 foot boat that weighs
forty or fifty thousand pounds, has two engines, a complex navigation
system including radar, and fire it up and go "cruisin' ." You actually
don't have to know anything about boating in order to be able to do
this. As long as you've got the USCG-mandated safety equipment on
board, you're good to go.
Adding to this lack of logic is the fact that with the exception of the
airplane, a boat is actually more difficult to operate safely than any
of the other devices I listed in the first paragraph. The wheeled
vehicles are going to go in the direction their wheels are pointed, and
the railroad locomotive is going to follow the tracks (one hopes). None
of these machines is going to drift sideways at the whim of the wind or
a current, head off in some direction on its own while backing up, or
drag potentially damaging wakes along behind it. A boat, in my opinion,
requires more judgment to operate safely than any of the other machines
except the airplane simply because of the infinitely variable
environment it operates in. Yet there is no training required before a
person attempts to maneuver their new 55 foot, 50,000 pound machine
through a crowded harbor and into a narrow slip on a windy day.
I've heard all the "taking away our God-given rights" arguments against
the notion of training, testing, and licensing boat operators, but while
I'm all for protecting our individual rights I've not heard anyone who's
arguing against the training and licensing boat operators suggest at the
same time that we also eliminate the requirement for training, testing,
and licensing pilots, truckers, motorcyclists, locomotive engineers, or
car drivers. Yes, there are all sorts of nasty penalties for breaking
the boating rules and having an accident, but it's pretty hard to
prevent an accident once it's occurred. And from what I've heard, read,
and observed, most boating accidents are caused by people who are
operating their boats incorrectly or who haven't learned through
training and practice the judgment needed to make the right decisions or
manipulate the controls of their boat to deal properly with the forces
acting on it at the moment.
I guess the perceived need for training, testing, and licensing is based
on the perceived consequences to the people involved. Someone dying
because they didn't know how to operate their airplane correctly is seen
as way more terrible than that same person dying because he didn't know
how to operate his boat correctly. A locomotive engineer with a
hangover who doesn't see a signal and plows into the back of a commuter
train and kills a bunch of people is seen as way worse than a boater who
has no clue how navigation lights should be interpreted and runs his
cruiser between a tug and tow at night and kills most of the large
family party on board (both of these are true occurrences).
For a society which is increasingly "rule and regulation" crazy and
seems hell bent on proving that everything is somebody else's fault, I
find it curious that operating a boat is perceived as being as easy and
risk-free as walking down the driveway to pick up the paper.
______________________________
C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington
[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/ms-tnef which had a name of winmail.dat]
_______________________________________________
http://lists.samurai.com/mailman/listinfo/trawlers-and-trawlering
To unsubscribe send email to
with the word
UNSUBSCRIBE and nothing else in the subject or body of the message.
Trawlers & Trawlering and T&T are trademarks of Water World
Productions. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
|