The Need for Speed?

 

REGISTERED BOATS are required to carry specific safety gear that’s designed to save lives, but none of that gear matters if the boat’s going so fast that everyone in it is ejected in a collision. 

In a two-week span earlier this year, across several states, multiple people lost their lives in boating accidents. And in each of those instances, at least one of the boats involved was traveling at a high rate of speed. 

Same as in auto racing, boats get faster every year. In early May, a race boat on Lake Havasu went airborne at what several sources estimated was around 200 mph. (Dramatic video is out there. Take a look.) It’s testament to the safety features in those boats and by nothing short of a miracle that neither man on that boat was killed. 

Fishing boats don’t go that fast…yet. But the fastest hulls out there now tickle the 100 mph mark, and that may be a line the industry doesn’t need to cross. At least not yet.

I’m not opposed to fast boats. My grandfather built racing hydroplanes and their engines. Their speed fascinated me. I even got to run one – once, briefly, because the acceleration spooked me a little. Never knelt in that little boat again.

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Today, the faster you get where you’re going, the more time you have to fish, right? And fishing is why most of us want to go faster. The trouble, though, is that to drive a boat safely at 80, 90 or 100-plus miles per hour requires special skills that most boat operators don’t have. 

For perspective, at 100 mph, you’re covering almost fifty yards per second. So even if you do see a half-submerged log half a football field ahead, you have less than a second to decide whether to zig left or zag right. And only one shot at getting it right. Too often this past spring, high-speed boat drivers are getting it wrong.

In many states, the only requirements for running at triple-digit speed across a lake or bay are being seated at the wheel of that boat and knowing how to start it. You don’t have to own it, and you don’t have to understand how it handles. No experience required. 

For accidents during that dreadful two weeks or so earlier this year, aside from operator inattention, the common thread in all those fatal accidents was that the drivers of one or both boats had no professional instruction in handling boats at any speed. Zero. 

Driving fast in a straight line over unoccupied, slightly rippled water isn’t especially challenging (except for the underwater-obstacle factor). Add any twists – chop, teenagers on personal watercraft, blinding glare off the surface…alcohol – and the risk factor skyrockets.

Worth noting, on a positive note, I don’t recall alcohol being a factor in any of those spring crashes. That’s good, but it also emphasizes how dangerous speed on the water can be even for sober operators. 

Preaching to the choir is something I seldom do but now seems an opportune time to share again that lakes and bays are entirely unlike streets and highways. Open lakes and bays have no traffic lanes, no red lights or stop signs or designated merging lanes. There actually are rules that tell licensed captains how to approach and pass other vessels safely, but recreational boaters aren’t required to learn any of that. 

The only logical conclusion to be drawn from what’s happened thus far with rocket-fast boats is this: Not enough lives have been lost yet to draw attention. We haven’t had to attend enough unnecessary funerals for boater education to become mandatory prior to the operation of any boat – even kayaks, because kayakers must be prepared in an instant to deal with the people in high-powered boats who might be distracted.

I discussed boater education on the radio, at length, for several weeks around the times of those fatal crashes, and several interesting ideas came up. Seat belts and air bags, flashing lights, law enforcement with radar like what’s used on highways. All interesting conceptually, but none remotely functional. Most of those remedies would only come into play after someone already was operating a boat unsafely.

You don’t get a speeding ticket until you’re speeding. Air bags don’t deploy unless you hit something really hard. And more lights on boats likely would cause more distraction, same as those dreadful flashing lights on the backs of commercial vehicles…as if we wouldn’t see them. Lighting boats like fire trucks would only create further distraction from what’s off the bow, which is the only place where things on or in the water really matter.

The way to reduce horrific boating accidents is through instruction long before they happen, even before the boat comes off the trailer and slides into the water. Boat owners need to know how boats operate. How they accelerate. How they turn. How they stop. How they maneuver at speed. 

I’m not saying we need PhD-level training to take the kids out on the pontoon boat. But I would feel more comfortable knowing that the guy behind the console of the boat coming my way, at 20 mph or 90 mph, had completed at the very least an online course in how not to slam into other boats.

 

Email Doug Pike at ContactUs@fishgame.com