Offshoreonly.com - Thoughts on a new boating saftey idea...

Ok so i get a magazine here at work called design news showing all sorts of new stuff in the industrial world....anyway Raymarine has come out with a new gizmo called a crew status detector. Basically it will send out a signal if the device gets wet or moves more then 30' away from the base....like if someone fell overboard. So it got me to thinking....i wont say all but the majority of new boats out there come with fuel injection standard.....and a computer controls most functions of the engine....and seeing that smart craft has allot of cool features displayed on the head unit they have...i thought why not make a wireless kill switch/panic button avail for boats?

This is how i see this working:

-The base (or brains) of this system can either be a stand alone unit that plugs into a data port of an EFI?MPI motor or be integrated with the Smart Craft system.

-The system would be programed for the boat...meaning if the boat is rated for 5 people there would be 5 of these gizmo's on board. Boats with no ratings would be programed to how the owner wants...or have the ability to add more detectors via the head unit... (I know people carry more people then what may be safe but if anything happens your screwed more ways then one!)

-In the event a person was to fall overboard and trip the alarm...the computer would kill the engine/engines....and who ever is driving would need to either press a button or hit a button on a touch screen to acknowledge the alarm before the engine/engines would restart. (this way you don't run the risk of anyone getting chopped up by running props)

-People wearing the detector also have a panic button they are able to press in the event of an emergency......which when activated would slow the engines down to idle...press it again and the engines get killed......this i see useful for anyone scared out of their pants with crazy drivers...or if someone was to get hurt during a high speed run and the driver not noticing cause they were in the back of the boat.

I'm sure more things could be integrated into the system if needed but this was just a brain storm i had sitting at my desk today

So whats the verdict? good idea? bad? there's obviously no way to MAKE people wear them just like the kill switches today...but i think this would be something a bit ore advanced then just the pull cords out there now..

http://www.raymarine.com/raymarine/d...=1344&parent=2