Boat Crash Data

The Tampa Bay Times recently wrote an article titled: How common are Florida boat crashes? The article does a very good job of explaining where crashes most often occur, in what counties, during holidays and weekends, and how many involve drunk driving of the boat. The link to that story is here: How common are Florida boat crashes? Here’s what the data shows.

Florida decided a long time ago to value boating money over boating safety. As the article correctly stated, if a person is born before January 1988 they do not need any license, permit, training, or even any experience to operate a boat in Florida waters. If they can afford a 35′ vessel with trip-350s on the back they can take it out on the water today with no experience whatsoever. No written exam, no eye test, no driver test. Florida makes it easy for residents and tourists to spend their boating dollars here. Even for a boater safety card–for those born after 1988–you can do that on line in a couple of hours. Still no test. Still no experience necessary before getting out on the water amongst all the other boaters on a Saturday or major holiday. One thing the article fails to mention but greatly factors into boating accidents is the rise of boating clubs, boat rentals, and P2P (BoatSetter, GetMyBoat rentals and copy cat companies, etc.) which often draw first-time boaters. Florida made its choice, it’s boating money over boating safety.

The boater safety card law became effective on October 1, 2011. The legislature chose those born after January 1, 1988 as needing a boater card, knowing at that time it would only require those in their early 20s and younger to have to get the card. They would have also recognized for every year after that initial year the age of persons needing the card would continually increase. When the law first passed everyone age 21 or 22, depending upon their actual birth day, would have been grandfathered in. The point is that anyone today above the age of 37 is still NOT required to even get this minimum, on-line “safety” card. And many of the boat club boats travel well in excess of 40 mph. If a 40 year-old tourist first-time boater walks up today they can rent a boat that goes 50 mph with no prior experience. Now FWC cannot make a safety check stop thanks to the law just passed by the legislature. It is decisions like these which make boating more dangerous for all boaters. Florida can complain about boat crashes but they have made them easier to occur.

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