Thursday, February 01, 2007
I don't like mandatory boating education, but what can I say?
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
I bought my first boat with money I earned during an Army tour at Fort Jackson, S.C. in the early '60s. It was a 12-foot johnboat with a 3-hp outboard engine. Since then, I have owned three additional boats, each a couple of feet longer than the previous one, and much more powerful.
That’s more than 40 years of operating a boat -- from inland streams to the ocean -- without an accident; not even a ticket.
Now it appears I am going to be required to take a boating education course in order to continue operating a craft.
Legislation in both the House and Senate advocating mandatory safety education of most boaters is moving rapidly through the Virginia General Assembly
I’m not particularly fond of the idea. In the outdoors, of all places, I value freedom. That’s one of the attractions of outdoor sports. Boating education is yet another layer of government infringement.
We’ve had several in recent years. Mandatory blaze orange for deer hunting is one. Mandatory hunter-training for youth and first-time hunters is another.
When the blaze-orange movement came along, I didn’t like the idea of someone telling me what I had to wear when deer hunting, even though I faithfully was wearing the stuff before it was required. I’ve come to see the blaze orange requirement as a good thing, something that saves lives, because some people don’t have sense enough to be safe apart from mandates.
I’m not about to opposed mandatory boating education. Not liking it and opposing it are two different things.
Our outdoor world has changed. Those 12-foot craft of the '60s today have become 18- to 38-foot craft that will roar across the water at eye-ripping speeds.
There are more of us, too, considering there are in excess of one-quarter million boats registered in Virginia. Some weekends, every last one of them appears to be on Smith Mountain Lake or along the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.
Then, too, people aren’t growing up in the outdoors and becoming involved with things like boats and firearms like they did when we were more of a rural society. Many don’t have dads to teach them outdoor skills. That’s why you see kids cutting donuts with a personal-water craft while other people are nearby or a professional man buying a 40-foot yacht and just taking off in it having never been around a boat before.
Here are some things I don’t like about the mandatory boating education movement:
>The incorrect projection that a multiple-choice, written test will suddenly take all of the risk out of boating.
>The reality that the mandatory boating education movement is a spin-off of a tragic, high-profile accident on Smith Mountain Lake that had nothing to do with education but everything to do with irresponsibility, excessive speed and intoxication.
>The fact that the lawmakers have zeroed in on boater education alone when the National Transportation Safety Board places equal emphasis on mandatory use of personal flotation devices by children. Virginia is one of six states that do not require children to wear a PFD. A study by the board revealed that 85 percent of the people who drowned in a boating accident were not wearing PFDs.
>The lack of a provision to exempt the operators of small boats, the kind powered by electric motors or outboards of less than 10 horsepower.
>The failure to nail down what all this is going to cost and who is going to pay for it.
>The figure being flaunted that 80 percent of boating accidents involve operators who have not taken a boater safety training. What would you expect, since Virginia does not require such training?
>The fact that the Senate bill calls for mandatory training “on any inland lake wholly located within the commonwealth,” which would eliminate saltwater along with Kerr and Gaston lakes, which are shared with North Carolina. If we are going to have it, make it uniform across the state.
Things I like about the movement:
>It will be phased in from July 1, 2009 to July 1, 2016, which should help avoid a stampede of everyone trying to get certified at the same moment.
>The fact that I will be able to take the course and examination at home, maybe even online.
>The amendment that allows a boater to let his uncertified son or daughter or guest to take the wheel of the craft under the operator’s supervision. Lacking that, there would be a decline in new boaters and boat sales. Strict hunter-education requirements have been cutting into the recruitment of new hunters to the point that several states have revisited their laws.
>The idea that violators won’t be buried under the jail, that fines will be reasonable.
>The renewed trust that the guy heading his boat straight for me knows the rules of the road and will veer to the right, because he has had training.
