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Originally Posted by Paugus Bay Resident
As I mentioned previously (post #30), please read the report and draw your own conclusions as I have.
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Since the "speed" statistics are a hodge-podge of numbers, and the compilations incredibly subjective, I don't see how an objective conclusion can ever be drawn.
News reports show a big boat running over the smaller boat. The smaller boat was occupied by two adults on their first date. The news presumes the two to be watching the night skies during the Perseids meteor shower, as witnesses have stated.
A stationary or anchored boat is presumably best for viewing a meteor shower. In fact, the override would have been avoided if the smaller boat had the capability to move. Anchoring at night is legal on Long Lake.
The boat that collided with them that night was reported to have a teenaged girl as the only passenger, with a driver twice her age. Not the formula for sympathetic witnesses or jurors.
The Coast Guard would record four "falls overboard", because everybody involved fell out. The reported speed of the accident would be the presumed speed of the struck boat.
That's because the exact speed of the colliding boat, though presumably high due to the ejections from the speedboat, is not material. When two fatalities occur, it doesn't matter if the speed was 50 or 150 mph for statistics. It does matter if the struck boat was anchored or drifting.
We've seen instances where a solitary boat upset has lost every passenger to drowning. What is recorded as the speed of that unwitnessed upset? Not all boats drift away from a swimming passenger who would be recorded as a drowning fatality. Not all fatalities in the "speed" category will be the result of a boat collision. But if a collision, it should be recorded as the speed of the victim.
It's a hodge-podge of numbers drawn from a hodge-podge of circumstances. Anyone drawing conclusions from that table is using their own personal crystal ball.