History:
1) Members
FLL, MAXUM and others predicted the Winnipesaukee tragedy of August, 2002 by a few weeks. Moreover, searching the word "arrogant" brought up 40 entries prior to that crash.
D.I.Y.
My own prediction appeared
in newsprint just three days prior to the first tragedy—at a speed still in
dispute.
We didn't expect:
—a hit-and-run tragedy by an experienced and speed-seasoned boater...
—
that flight afterwards was not illegal...
—nor the three-day delay in admitting his boat
"may" have been involved in the fatality.
HB-
162 followed on the heels of that collision: when HB-162 failed, HB-
847 was passed instead, following still another deadly headline.
2) The last sub-forum statements left some confusion among recent members regarding HB-847 and "denying the lake to others due to speed".
Here's another try at it, using a recent example that I observed:
This past Monday at 9:30 AM, a tight group of three boats whipped past Rattlesnake Island southbound at about 70-MPH: each carried the required one acre of responsibility with them.
In accord with the Unsafe Passage Rule, that means three square acres denies the lake to
all boaters ahead and, like a giant broom, swept those three acres forward at 70 miles per hour!
Worse, it can be repeated over the same spot within minutes.
HB-847 addresses that concept: that speed denies a huge temporal space of the lake from others, and extreme speeds will deny even more of the lake to boaters.
I'll stake my screen-name on that concept! 
Just This Month:
Only one life was taken on a lake with a speed limit, and it was by the usual speeding suspect. Where there was no speed limit, five in one boat were killed—
again by the usual speeding suspect.
(Five fatalities has tied with the toll in a recent event which was "not a race":
five is
not a boating record).
If it hadn't been HB-847, some other
headline could have brought even more stringent rules.
Fear:
1) There are reasonable fears and
unreasonable fears:
We've seen that the act of
"buckling up" seatbelts causes fear. (An unreasonable fear.)
Others fear cancer, and pass laws restricting tobacco use in restaurants and other shared areas: still others fear brain damage, and will wear a helmet while on a motorcycle. (A reasonable fear.)
I choose the side who fears brain damage and who fears cancer.
I still pay extra for airbags to protect those who fear seatbelts: it's just a necessary part of saving all of us—in spite of those who will deny any
reasonable fear.
2) Lake Winnipesaukee has dodged the multi-fatality collisions at other locales by one great law that has been protecting us for 30+ years; sadly, we see daily that our "Unsafe Passage" rule is receiving inadequate compliance, uneven enforcement, and even the vaunted "Education" element has failed our previously-enjoyable Lake Winnipesaukee boating experiences.
HB-847 resulted.
3) In the past, no tickets could be written for speeds over headway speed—
now they can! 
Also now, the night-hidden scourge of BWI can be assaulted stealthily using radar.
That "nothing perceptible will change" is wrong. I predict that the night speed limit will be the most productive part of the new law in keeping problem boaters away—night and day.
Although the Coast Guard will take three years to produce the statistics, we should expect HB-847 to make much improvement in finding BWI "drivers".
(We got "drivers", now? What happened to "helmsmen"?)
4) By choosing which laws to break, one boating segment has brought HB-847 down upon themselves: HB-847 isn't the fault of "everybody" or "crowds".
Too often, it is easier to "split the difference" between lesser boaters rather than to back off the throttles. What pass for quiet mufflers still brings dread to boaters at anchor, fishermen, lakeside residents no longer secure in their houses, and those attending to a skier or tuber. You'll see them glance up—and it's not an admiring look they'll give in the direction of that menacing approach.
When existing laws are ignored among an increasingly arrogant boating segment, demands for a different legal approach can be expected: enter HB-847.
Where This is Headed:.
If one were to contrast the
failure of HB-162 to the
success of HB-847 in these forums, you'd see that HB-847 caused far greater rancor—
especially after the bill was signed!
Even during this "week of truce", negative comments creep into the larger forum: The threat of deletion has kept this present thread ("Final Statements") civil.
Unless Don does wholesale "deletes" upon every instance, how can we be hopeful that the issue has been left behind and the rest of this great forum doesn't become a "poisoned well"?
Just as affected boaters should have policed their errant boating peers on the lake, each of us must now self-police our comments here.
