An MP boat and a police boat went out and fished their bodies aboard and drove them to shore. These boats were plenty large enough for the conditions on the lake that day, and the officers did not even need to get wet. If we did not have the SL in effect that day, I'd agree that going out to retrieve these bodies endangered the officers' lives, but only due to the dangers of getting run down and cut in half by a speeding cigarette boat. Since the SL was in effect that day, that risk was eliminated and these guys faced little more risk on the lake than had they stayed ashore. I appreciate and respect what our law enforcers and safety professionals do...more than most. My brother is a cop. But retrieving drown bodies from the lake is part of their job. It is part of the job they chose. That is a whole different thing than taking your kids out in your boat for a day of recreation, thinking you have taken every precaution, proceeding slowly, and getting run over and killed out of the blue by some clown with the "need for speed".
Actually, a boat going 70 MPH passes 150 ft in 1.45 seconds. And the difference from the 45 MPH boat is 0.85 seconds.
And therein lies the flaw in your logic. You see, the accepted average “perception and reaction time” is around 1.5 seconds for a sober driver in daylight conditions. (see any of the thousands of reliable sources around the internet, such as
http://www.firerescue1.com/Columnist...tances-Part-1/) This is the time it takes you or me to see a kid's head pop up 150 feet directly in front of the boat, recognize the need to change course, send a signal from our brain to our hands to brake or steer (oh ya, we don't have brakes)...to steer, and to start effecting that signal. At 70MPH, we are just starting to turn our wheel 0.05 seconds AFTER we hear the thump of the poor kid's head as it is shattered into thousands of pieces of skull and brain. At 45 MPH, we have
0.8 SECONDS to spare. So yes, the 0.8 seconds that you dismiss as being so trivial is actually the very difference between the kid's life and death.
I don't think anyone except the most retarded cowboy would do so intentionally. But it is not the intentional case that usually results in all these deaths. It is usually when the unforeseen happens...the accident. One of those kayaks that you guys say are so impossible to see suddenly is visible in front of you. Or that poor kid is swimming out farther than he should be and pops up from underwater. 150 feet is not a sufficient safety zone for these high speeds.
And for good reason I think. I believe in a guys right to kill himself if he so chooses. But people who don't want to take these chances should not be "taken along for the ride". As I read in one letter last year, peopel who think roller coasters are too dangerous can choose not to hop aboard. But people who think high speed boating is too dangerous cannot prevent getting themselves run over by some idiot cowboy who is going too fast and loses control. And as all these accidents that you guys poo-poo for being on other lakes and such, boats going too fast and losing control happens ALL THE TIME.
Here's a perfect example. These two guys only killed themselves when they flipped at excessive speed. I'm sorry, but it's really hard to feel sorry for them. But had some innocent boater been cruising along nearby, who knows whether the bodies and debris would have also crashed into them and killed them, and I'd have a really tough time NOT feeling sorry for them. The speeders knew they were taking a risk. They chose to take a risk. But the innocent bystanders chose a safer lifestyle and simply don't deserve this. Luckily, there were no innocent bystanders THIS TIME;
http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?se...cal&id=6347901