Following up on the Dinner Key July 4th, 2014 accident in South Florida (four fatalities and several critically injured), Trevor Bach of Miami New Times published a Riptide blog post on 31 July 2014 titled, “Dinner Key Tragedy: Advocates Say Florida Could Save Lives With One Simple Safety Law”

Lanyard photo courtesy of The U.S. Coast Guard

He says boating safety advocates say the boating industry does not want kill-switch lanyard use to be mandatory, then quotes me as saying “They don’t want mandatory anything”.

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PropellerSafety.com comments:

I would go on to say that is true of many industries. That is the basic nature of regulation. If an industry was already doing something or had established their own standards requiring certain things to be done, there would be no need to force them to do it. Industries resist almost all proposed regulations in their initial form. If they think they can’t stop the regulation, they try to water it down and minimize its impact upon them and the use of their products. This is often accomplished through self regulation, like the boating industry does with American Boat & Yachting Council (ABYC) voluntary standards.

For example, the Coast Guard has been studying kill-switch lanyard preventable accidents since the mid 1970’s and they still can’t pass a regulation requiring all new small boats meeting certain specifications be built with a kill switch in them or on the motor. In the most recent round, the National Marine Manufacturers Association said they surveyed their members and most of them install them in most of their boats, but NMMA still refuses to support a standard requiring their installation. However, NMMA does point to an ABYC voluntary standard for engine cut-off switches (a voluntary standard for kill switches if they are installed) as something that should be referenced by any proposed rule.

As to mandatory use of kill-switches (a point on which we have remained neutral), NMMA did not support it in their public comments on the last two U.S. Coast Guard proposals (USCG-2009-0206 and USCG-2011-0497). Back in 2002, NMMA came out against proposed mandatory installation of kill-switches in houseboats (to keep the operator at the helm when underway) with abandon. They issued an alert, prepared a template letter and twice encouraged their members to use the template to file their own public comments response to the proposed rule, argued against the regulation and supplied this quote to rally NMMA members:

NMMA Quote:
 

“Based on the volume of responses the USCG has currently received, the recreational marine industry is outnumbered five to one by those in favor of propeller protection devices. The industry has to make their voice heard before it’s too late,” says Kelly Bobek, NMMA director of Federal Government Relations.”

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Back to the Miami New Times article:

Trevor cites us estimating kill switch wear rates at less than 25 percent (see kill-switch wear rates estimated from BARD data), notes the availability of virtual lanyards, and notes manuals and warnings are “frequently scant or vague, like a single line in one 2014 boat’s operator checklist that simply advises the user to check that “Lanyard stop switch is operational and securely fastened.””

NMMA logo

When she was asked if NMMA would hypothetically support a new mandatory boating kill switch requirement in Florida, she said, “If boaters wanted that then yeah, we would support that.”

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PropellerSafety.com comments:

NMMA has never responded to a Coast Guard proposal on kill switch lanyard use by saying they supported mandatory use. The houseboat proposal above and their quote to their own members speaks for itself:

NMMA quote
 

“Based on the volume of responses the USCG has currently received, the recreational marine industry is outnumbered five to one by those in favor of propeller protection devices. The industry has to make their voice heard before it’s too late,” says Kelly Bobek, NMMA director of Federal Government Relations.”

As to NMMA hypothetically supporting mandatory use in Florida if boaters wanted it, NMMA has gone on record numerous times against piecemeal regulations (regulations by a single state). They want the entire country to be the same so their members do not have to build different models for different regions, and so their marketing and advertising campaigns can be broad based.

One point about the Dinner Key accident, most proposed mandatory use of kill-switch rules have applied to smaller vessels, like those under about 26 feet in length. The Dinner Key boats were larger vessels and would not have been covered by some of the previous proposals.

As to how to address the problem, we suggest mandatory use is a very hard consensus to reach, it is much easier if boaters want something, than to force it on them. The system pulls itself vs. being pushed by regulation.

A Path Forward to Increasing Kill-Switch / Kill-cord Wear Rates

We suggest the path below as a way to move forward as an alternative to allowing the debate over mandatory wear to rage on a few more decades while nothing gets done.

A few regulations and some encouragement by the industry and the Coast Guard to accomplish the steps below would result in many more boaters using kill-switch lanyards without making their use mandatory.

The industry could self regulate itself AND:

• Require kill switches to be installed in all new boats meeting certain criteria.
• Call them “kill switches” (we will be covering this point in a future post).
• Place warnings on the boat and in the operators manuals that instruct boaters to use kill switch lanyards and explain what can happen to them if they don’t (Circle of Death).
• Make some of the newer technologies available (virtual lanyards) or at least let those buying new boats know they exist.
• Allow the Coast Guard to issue a Public Service Announcements on kill switches of the nature of the one they issued on propeller safety (graphical/shocking coverage of a mock propeller accident) that the industry banned because they said it showed boating in a bad light. The PSA could call attention to the Circle of Death.
• Make sure high quality, free boating safety classes are being offered, and offer a reward (possibly a discount, a cool trinket they want, a free hat with a logo promoting boating safety classes, a cool sticker for their boat, certificate for a gallon of gas, etc.) to boaters that take the class.

The U.S. Coast Guard could:

• Require all boater operators to take a boating safety training course and require that course to include coverage of kill switches and what can happen if you don’t use them (Circle of Death).
• Require all boat rental operations to conduct a brief safety training session and require that session to include coverage of kill switches and what can happen if you don’t use them (Circle of Death).
• Require states to estimate their kill-switch wear rates. States not making reasonable progress toward reasonable wear rate goals could see a discount in Coast Guard funding for other objectives.

The industry, the Coast Guard, and boating safety advocates working together could finally get something done in this field. Plus the boating safety classes would be encouraging wearing life jackets, discouraging the use of alcohol, and promoting other boating safety messages as well.