public education
The best public education would be to drop people in 40-degree water.
I really don’t understand
why they are not required everywhere.
In PA there are as many regulations as there are bodies of water it seems. Would be so much simpler to just make it a requirement everywhere. No guessing in what state or what waters you might be violating.
In USCA Nationals, I saw a canoe go over and one paddler went under repeatedly. Each time coming up some 20 feet in random direction from when he disappeared. Stuck in a whirlpool of sorts. His buddy saved the boat and shouted how sorry he was each time his partner surfaced. Finally, he got hold of some shore branches and held until rescue got there. It was quite frightening to watch. I don’t understand why they don’t make it mandatory during sanctioned races either.
I am guilty of shedding mine during gentle fishing trips.
Having it strapped on deck or tucked under your seat does little as your boat sinks or drifts away. But I fully support your choice to not wear it if law makes it optional. And I would support a mandatory on all waters law too.
Good law
If everyone was a good and responsible member of society we would need no laws. Unfortunatly we need laws for everything. I would have no problem dropping the seatbelt law ; but if a person gets thrown from the car and is under insured we should let him die in his own bed sores. Same thing for motorcycle helmets - if they have no insurance; let them bleed out in the street. But in this country we don’t let people bleed out, we just pay for there stupidity.
Like the motorcycle helmet laws, this
one can be reversed if there is enough opposition.
But as someone who worked in rehab medicine, I support requiring motorcyclists to wear helmets (I always wore mine), so I don’t know where I stand on the PFD issue. I almost always wear my PFD, and I see a lot of turkeys who should be required to wear theirs, but pnetters have enough judgement to decide on their own.
No judgement
of your skills was made, just the validity of the information you were disseminating. eg. because you wear a drysuit you don’t have to worry about hypothermia.
This law is not about saving lives…
It is about saving money recovering your dead body. It is figured if your skills are low enough that you cannot re-enter your boat promptly, your are going to be dead. There is much less expense “plucking” a corpse from the top of the water then sending diving crews in to search for a few days over under ice etc.
Now if they’d only pass a law requiring bridge jumpers to wear a pfd for the same reason…