are pleasure boats running too fast?
 

i know the off teh cuff response will be: "no of course not". But for amoments lets put aside the "mine's faster than your's mentality (which we all have). and discuss this reasonabley.


are pleasure boats running to fast? Of recent there have been a bunch of major accidents leading to fatalities. As some of you know, I began racing open wheel formula cars aboat a year ago and have been involved with car racing for about 3 years. In this time in the scca (largest club racing organization) there have only been 4 fatalities. 2 drivers and 2 fans. Both drivers deaths were attributed to heart attacks that occured prior to the car loosing control. The fan death was at a rally race were 2 fans wandered outside of the cordoned off specator area and were struck by a car that was no longer on course and in fact rolled over several times.

Of recent there have been several major high speed wrecks that killed drivers and passengers in offshore pleasure boats. It seems odd to me that pleasure boating can account for more deaths than competative racing were the object is to push it as far as possible and somtime a little further against 30 other maniacs doing the same thing. I love runnign fast but is it right that anyone who can plunk down $300k can buy a run 160mph boat?

i know for me to obtain a racing liscene i had to attend an intensive 5 day course and run two provisional "races" with 5 other students and after that i was subject to a final review before gettign the ok to actually run in a real race. Additionally the car i race can;t even run as fast as some of the pleasure boats are now running. Quite frankly there are some pleasure boats that are far and away faster than even the fastest of the open wheel cars or GT1 (700hp tube frame vettes)running in the SCCA.

should some kind of liscensing or at least mandatory instructional sessions be required prior to purchasingand operating boats capabale of these speeds? Woudl it even be possible for the industry self regulate itself? IE Manufacturers mandating new owners take a course they design to teach peopel how to operate thier boats? And additionally offering these courses to any boat operator who thinks they need it. Be it fora small fee or whatever.

My opinion is taht its only a matter of time before a non perforamnce boater is involved in a major wreck (lieka sail boat or a politicians kid on a waverunner getting ripped by soemthing running at 100 or so) and then we'll have uninformed politicians steppig in and screwwwing things up even worse. IE last years speed limit battle in NJ. Imagine if tehre was a fataility fueling that fire???

Lets here your input. Of recent the members of this board have been reffered to as "knitwits" lets put the BS aside for a moment and see if maybe we can come up with some decent idea on how to make our hobby safer for ourseleves and for otehr boaters in general.

I do not think this is a good time for this thread considering the recent events:(

The too fast quesion has one major problem, what is the magic number? I think that much like the other sport I love, the insurance companies will eventually blacklist certain types of boats.

Puder,

I see your pointe but forget $$$ anyone can plunk down 10K and go 180 mph on a motorcycle, and sadly the human body does not respond well to stopping at those speeds in any craft regardless of safty equipment. As long as people will buy , people will build faster, and sadly more will hurt or die, it is in most of our nature to push the envelope (I do it myself) that is just the way it will be:(

Maybe not the response you want but I would like to hear what others have to say.

WILL;)

Too fast in my mind has to correlate to where the "too fast " is being run. You don't run 65mph thru a residential neighborhood like you would down the highway, neither should you thru a crowded narrow lake scenario or channel.

In open waters where no one except yourself and the passenger who can scream stop at any moment, could be harmed, then to each their own. Same with rock climbers; paragliders; cave divers; surfers; mountainclimbers; etc, etc. , etc....We are after all free to live our lives as well as risk it. Just so long as the innocent unaware "other" person is not...

havign dumped motorcyles (at lwo sped thank god, and yes it opened my eyes and i ride like an old woman now)and having one of my brother freind's paralyzed from the chest down last summer i'm pretty damn convinced that bikes are too damn fast. Nicky Hayden made a comment a while back that kind of opened my eyes.

"the current factory stock 600c road bikes are faster than the superbikes i won world championships on 5 years ago" (paraphrased)

as for this not being the time to bring thing like this up i dissagree. Often the best innovations in motorsports safety come out of the shadow of disasters. WHen alex zanardi was seriously injured in his champ car it forced them regulatory body to reconsider its side impact safety features, as a result it is believed severla drivers lives were saved at surfer's paradise in the major pile up a year later.

boating example. As i recall the lavin foundation was started to study and design a set of regulations for the use of f16 canopies on offshore boats. The foundation was the legacy created by his famliy after the tradgedy that cost the life of mark lavin.

I agree with Puder. At the speeds some of these boats are going, it's a question of when, not if, something will go terribly wrong. It doesn't have to mean driver error. A mechanical failure at 140 could ruin a lot of peoples day.

Speed is why we finally got out of poker runs. Too many boats, driven and maintained by people I don't know, running balls out in close quarters. I guess I'm just an old fart.

one major difference here is that you can recieve instruction on how to properly partake in all of those activities and minimize the risk to yourself. Where as in boating even if i wanted to learn how to operate my boat properly at high speed i'mnot aware of any place to learn teh proper technique. So far i've had to do trial and error and talkign with other boaters.

I htink trial and error at a 100mph gets you killed. Hell i've gotten myself into trouble a few times at 60 in my boat.

I'm with Too Old.

I don't know about the speed question but it looks like your spelling has gotten better.