[Evenstar]

Disclaimer: My “agenda” here is only to show why I feel we need a speed limit, so please don’t take this as a post against PWC – I’m just trying to show the need to slow down.

The rest of this post is directly taken from:

Hostile Waters - The Impacts of Personal Watercraft Use on Waterway Recreation – American Canoe Association - By David Jenkins
http://www.bluewaternetwork.org/reports/rep_pwc_ACAreport.pdf

“Each year the nation’s waterways become more and more crowded. While crowded waterways increase the risks associated with all types of waterway recreation, crowded waters become more dangerous when high-speed recreation mixes with other types of waterway use.”

… PWC, “comprising less than 10 percent of all vessels -- is involved in 55 percent of all collisions between vessels. In addition, recent data indicates that 70 percent of all PWC accidents are collisions with other vessels, fixed objects or floating objects. When combined with collisions with people swimming or otherwise outside a boat (struck by boat) that percentage climbs even higher.”

“Research conducted on the BARD database revealed a number of important findings. Between 1996 and 2000, 12,218 PWC were involved in collisions with other vessels.”

“For the past three years vessel-on-vessel collisions have accounted for 60 percent of all reported PWC accidents. For accidents that did not involve PWC, collisions with other vessels never accounted for more than 25 percent of the total. The average difference of 34 percentage points translates into a 150 percent higher frequency of collisions with vessels among PWC involved accidents.”

“PWCare designed and marketed for speed. It should be no surprise that excessive speed is consistently one of the most frequently reported causes of PWC accidents. In the 1998 NTSB study, excessive speed was the third most often cited PWC accident cause. In California, a state where PWC accidents have been carefully reviewed, excessive speed is the second most often cited cause for accidents involving PWC. The ACA review of PWCaccident data revealed that excessive speed was a likely factor in well over half of all PWC accidents.”

“ACA found many accidents where excessive speed was clearly indicated by the accident narrative, but not officially cited as a cause of the accident. Other accident causes such as careless/reckless and operator inattention were often officially cited as causes of accidents involving excessive speed.”

“The PWC accident data indicate thatPWC are more than twice as likely to be traveling in excess of 40 mph at the time of an accident than other vessel types. Injury data also point to speed as a prominent factor in PWC accidents. The injuries most often resulting from PWC accidents involve blunt-force trauma resulting from collisions. The USCG accident data for the year 2000 show that trauma accounted for over 90 percent of the reported injuries resulting from PWC accidents. The injury types -- amputation, broken bones, head injury, internal injury, contusions, spinal/back injury and laceration -- accounted for 1,214 of the 1,341PWC related injuries identified.”

“Speed may be an even greater problem in the future as PWC manufacturers continue to increase PWC power.”