Re: Risk Assessment?

happy life skills foundation (hapilife@efn.org)
Wed, 8 Sep 1999 11:51:03 -0700 (PDT)


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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This brings up stats on DRIVING....what's the ratio of deaths per 100,000
on auto related deaths? Seems like the most dangerous part of my sailing
day is driving to the boat or taking the bus...
Ken Silverman

On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Ron Force wrote:

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> West Wight Potter Website at URL
> http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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> Not a direct answer to your question, but there was a discussion of boating risk factors on Slate: http://www.slate.com/Code/chatterbox/chatterbox.asp?Show=8/31/99&idMessage=3516
>
> Here's an excerpt:
> We take for our text "Boating Statistics--1997" by the U.S. Coast Guard, whose expertise on these matters is unmatched. According to the report, 700 to 800 people die every year in boat-related fatalities (which, significantly, do not include drownings and other water-related deaths by people who go out on boats, unless the boat itself is somehow responsible--as would be the case, for instance, if someone died from falling off a boat rather than dying during a deliberately planned swim or scuba dive; though if, during a deliberately planned swim or scuba dive, someone were
> struck by a boat propeller and killed, that would count as a boat-related fatality). In 1997, the number who died in boat-related fatalities was 821. That comes out to 6.7 deaths per 100,000 boats (this is approximate; the Coast Guard doesn't have data on every single boat in the United States). During the previous decade, the fatality rate varied from about 6 to about 8 deaths per 100,000 boats, even as the number of boats counted by the Coast Guard rose from about 10 million to about 12 million. (The worst year was 1987, when there were 1,036 boat-related fatalities, or
> 10.4 fatalities per 100,000 boats.) But if 1997 was a not-bad year, relatively speaking, for boat-related deaths, it was a terrible year, relatively speaking, for boat-related injuries: there were 4,555, a record high.
>
> Eighty-two percent of 1997's boat-related fatalities occurred on boats shorter than 26 feet in length. More than half of these occurred on boats less than 16 feet in length. Forty percent of boat-related fatalities occurred when someone who did not own the boat was operating it. Open motor boats were responsible for the vast majority of boating-related fatalities, with canoes and kayaks ranking a very distant second. (Open motor boats were also responsible for the vast majority of boat-related hospital admissions, with cabin motorboats ranking a distant second and canoes
> and kayaks ranking an even-more distant sixth; presumably if you get into a serious accident on a kayak or canoe, it's more difficult to get yourself to a hospital.)
>
> A shockingly high proportion of boating accidents--27 percent--involve alcohol, and given people's incentive to lie about such things and the difficulty of administering breathalyzer tests under such circumstances, this statistic surely understates the problem. According to the Coast Guard, a boat operator with a blood alcohol concentration above .10 percent is more than 10 times more likely to be killed in a boating accident as a boat operator with a blood alcohol concentration of zero.
>
> So, unless you're a guy who gets tanked and borrows a small open motorboat without wearing a PFD, you're probably pretty safe. :-) BTW, the link to the Coast Guard statistics wasn't working today.
>
> Sam Finlay wrote:
>
> >
> > Hey gang,
> > The recent discussion about the dangers of sailing vs. mountain climbing has reminded
> > me of an issue that came up recently at home. My (17 yr. old) daughter has a small 9' sailboat
> > and her friend's mother will not allow her daughter to sail w/ mine on the grounds that
> > it is too dangerous. My initial take is that this is irrational behavior. After all this is the same
> > woman who lets her kids go skiing in winter. I don't have, nor have I ever heard of any statistics
> > on this sort of risk. What's the risk of sailing in an unsinkable boat (lots of flotation) while wearing
> > PFD's on a small lake which doesn't allow powerboats?
>
> Ron Force rforce@moscow.com
> Moscow, Idaho U.S.A.
>
>