I wear my PFD when boating on the water, and I love the water and am a good swimmer who use to free dive. I wore a seat belt after taking Drivers ED back in the late 60s. I also pulled a man up from the bottom of dark deep water who drowned while swimming. We were unable to resuscitate him. I was 17 at the time.
As a case in point for always wearing some form of flotation… A couple of years ago while I was out sailing a runaway boat came close to colliding with my boat and a friend’s boat. We were trapped inside of the circling high speed unmanned patrol boat. There wasn’t time to put on a PFD while trying to sail out of danger. We could have been severely injured or otherwise incapacitated by a collision. My ability to swim wouldn’t help in that case.
When you live in a complex society, individual freedoms often need to be secondary to the good of the whole. The military provides an extreme example of this. I have no problem with mandated safety regulations even though I may not always agree with some of them.
It was really difficult to text this while driving in all this heavy traffic!
By the way I pulled the officer from the water. He was thrown out of his boat. I spotted his bright yellow inflatable PFD. He failed to have the kill switch to the motor attached to him.
This law was passed in 2021 requiring the boat operator to have the kill switch attached to them while operating the boat.
I often wonder if the rules are to protect people or increase revenues. We will know in the next few years as the stats come in for the states invoking the new laws and we can compare to the states that didn’t make the change. My guess is we won’t see any change in boating related problems. And I do hope I’m wrong. If anything maybe they will increase the number of people patrolling the water and pay for them with the fines from not wearing a PFD and having these extra people on the water they may rescue more people.
I often think about the purpose of speed limits on American roads and the amount of effort and cost it takes to implement them. The cost isn’t incurred by the state as they bring in more than enough revenue thru ticketing to cover the cost and then some. If things slow down they can always put quotas.
With today’s tech what is the need. GPS knows where we are at and how fast we are moving how hard could it be to make the car limit its own speed to the speed limit and even weather could be factored in. I drive thru a toll easy pass and they know who I am and send me a bill with a picture of me in my car. They have cars that drive themselves they surely can make one that won’t break the law. I contend speed limits have more to do about making money than safety. If we took 1000s of cops off the highways writing tickets could we put them actually making people safe in the cities?
Except for Jimmy Carter’s (God bless him) speed restrictions, I think speed limits are due to engineering decisions when building roads. I’m sure the Autobahn has a lot less curves than most of our interstates. I will say that 30 years ago, these roads were to accommodate 70mph.I’m probably very ignorant about this stuff, but I mostly drive urban to suburban roads…
They can only obtain revenue if people exceed the speed limit. If you want to speed, you throw the dice and take your chances. I would like to thank all the speeders that get caught for supporting local law enforcement.
Same around here, but then people erect little monuments to their loved ones. I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, but they seem to last awhile before grass cutters dismantle them. I guess for me, is that most accidents and deaths are caused by poor driving. When I drove 22 miles each way to work, I can’t count how many people drive like a- holes just to cut in front of you to get one or two car lengths in front and wait till the last second to go from the far left lane to the right lane exit. Their time is more valuable than mine…I guess
If the GPS in your car limited you to the speed limit Max for the road you are on. We soon will have cars that drive themselves. Will they come with a button that says drive like a maniac?
Two cars upside down on a dry road today. Roads are deadly. I was doing 60 mph today only to be passed by exact same color Ford Excursion as I have doing 90 + mph.
Next you’ll tell me they have a car that shifts gesr automatically, or one without a transmission and they have a separate rsdio with external speskers that makes motor sounds. Ha! Astronauts on the moon!
It was really difficult to text this while driving in all this heavy traffic!
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