Quote:
Originally Posted by Evenstar
I am not talking about speeds during bad weather - every close call that I have had on winni has been when visibility has been excellent. A "reasonable man" would not travel at high speeds on a lake that is shared by smaller, slow moving boats. If all men were reasonable, and if all men actually cared how their actions might negatively affected others, we wouldn't need most laws. But not all men are reasonable, and many just don't care enough about others - so laws are needed.
And how exactly do you do that?
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Nor am I talking about speeds in bad weather, apparently you're not understanding the concept of not letting the bozos of the world set the legal limits. Let me try once again. You're applying your own definitions of "high" (wrt speed) and "reasonable" in the above snippet. Your justification that speeds are too "high" and that
some (your words) boaters don't see you (again an assumption on your part) in time. How would we determine just how "high" is too high and what's reasonable to expect from a person. Let me argue a hypothetical point just for bit and lets assume the numbers I'll use are true.
If 99.99% of all the boaters you come across see you and react sufficiently then it would be clear to me that it's reasonable to expect that you'll be seen and that the speeds have been sufficiently slow to allow that. If the reverse were true, that say only 10% of the boaters were seeing you and 90% were taking last second evasive action then it would seem that the ability to see and react to your presence is far beyond what I can reasonably expect of a normal human being. So what's the truth on Winni ?
I can't speak for every other boater out there. I can speak for mself and like I said before, kayaks maybe harder to see but that's relative. They are easy enough to see, assuming the Capt (a normal human, not Superman) is paying reasonable and proper attention, so that there's more than enough time to see, comprehend and react to avoid a collision at much higher speeds than your desired 40 mph or the enacted 45 mph. That we don't have scores of runover kayaks and canoes is testimony to this. Is there a speed that above which I can't reasonably expect a normal human to be able to avoid you in a kayak; yes of course. The infamous 130 mph cat would, if run at it's max speed, be going too fast. Were such boats (or even lesser ones) common on the lake I wouldn't have a problem with speed limits.
So to better understand whether you think there's a speed problem or an attention problem let me ask the follwoing questions. What distance do you think you're visible at under the conditions you mentioned above ? Is a boater, running say 60 mph and actually paying attention more likely to see and avoid you or more likely to miss you ?
With regards to your 2'nd point above .... that's a longer response than I have time for but it's worth considering by all parties. But basically the bonehead boaters need to be identified and penalized and that takes more work that a simple speed law but in 10 years I predict people will be clamoring for action along that line because the lake will be full of Capt B's towing kid on tubes ignoring all the commonsense rules and "we" will be asking where all the idiots came from*.
*assuming anyone can afford gas in 10 years. And in case you asked, the idiots come from a society where nothing more than medocrity is expected and excellence is disparaged.