2018 Recreational Boating Statistics Report

BrentB

Tale of Two Reports: Boating Deaths Down and List of Danger 'Hot Spots'
The U.S. Coast Guard released its 2018 Recreational Boating Statistics Report Tuesday, revealing that there were 633 boating fatalities nationwide in 2018, a 3.8 percent decrease from 2017. Meanwhile a private group has released a report on the most dangerous places to boat by state. Dangerous Hot Spots for Boating is based on 2017 data collected by the IRE organization, Investigative Reporters & Editors.

https://www.passagemaker.com/trawler-news/two-reports-on-boating-accidents

NORO LIM · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 8:10 pm Post subject:

Thanks for posting this.

An excerpt from the report: "Alcohol continued to be the leading known contributing factor in fatal boating accidents in 2018, accounting for 100 deaths, or 19 percent of total fatalities."

This should probably be posted on another current thread: "Most stupid thing you've seen"

localboy · Posted: Thu Aug 29, 2019 10:51 pm Post subject:

NORO LIM · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2019 1:13 am Post subject:

The one year snap shot for an individual state can produce so small a sample size that it is dangerous to draw any kind of conclusions. One thing that stood out to me on a quick once-over is that Alaska may be the hands-down winner in the deaths per capita category. Again, I don't know how the numbers hold up on a multi-year basis, but I'm not too surprised - Alaska has a lot of cold, rough, water in remote areas, and probably has as much boating per capita as any state. It might also not be just a coincidence that Alaska has ranked pretty high in alcohol consumption per capita.

Foggy · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2019 9:11 am Post subject:

thataway · Posted: Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:04 pm Post subject:

On The Hull Truth, there are a series of articles on safety, with some coast guard prospective comentary form a retired service number. He pointed out that these are only statistics which require federal reporting--and that the state numbers may be higher in many cases.

There has been a recent thread about a collision where a boat owned by Kevin O'Leary,( who is celebrity from "Shark Tank"), and ostensively was driven by his wife, hit a pontoon boat carrying 13 people. Two were killed and 2 more taken to the hospital and then released. The collision occurred at night--maybe some "fog" on the lake in Canada. In looking up the stats of frequency of boating accidents, one of the top leaders is collision both with recreational boats and other objects.

Mr. O'leary claimed the pontoon boat did not have running lights on, and "fled the scene. In fact both boats had left the scene by the time police arrived. The pontoon boat skipper having called 911 and making with all haste to where the EMS ambulance would meet to treat and transfer injured persons.