While fatalities continue, life jacket use remains low
Jun 10 2009 in Currents by Deborah Bach
Year after year, authorities working on the water witness the same tragedy—boaters who could have been saved if only they were wearing life jackets.
About 25 people die on Washington waters each year, and the number of those not wearing life jackets consistently hovers around 90 percent. In most cases those deaths are preventable, said Dan Shipman, who runs the recreational boating safety program for the U.S. Coast Guard’s 13th district.
“If you’re wearing your life jacket, that’s going to increase your chances of survival exponentially,” Shipman said.
The importance of life jackets was starkly underscored with the deaths of three Washington boaters last week. Kirkland resident August Reyes, 56, died after going overboard in Lake Washington late Thursday night. Sean Mansfield of Maple Falls and Gunther Frank of Bellingham are missing and presumed drowned after their sailboat overturned in Chuckanut Bay in the early hours of Friday morning. None of the boaters was wearing a life jacket.
People aged 18 and 49 are the group most likely to be killed while boating, but a 2008 national Coast Guard study on life jacket use found that fewer than 5 percent of adult powerboaters and only about one-quarter of sailors wear life jackets. By contrast, 96 percent of adults who ride Jet Skis and other personal watercraft wear life jackets.
About 90 percent of people killed in boating-related accidents are not wearing life jackets.
The most common cause of fatal accidents among boaters is falling overboard, following by capsizing. Recreational boats are required to carry a personal flotation device for every person aboard and have them readily accessible, but adults generally aren’t required to wear them.
Some states have life jacket laws for specific boating activities—in May, the Oregon Senate passed a law requiring life jackets on waters rated Class III or higher.
But life jacket use is not universally mandated, and Shipman doesn’t think that’s likely to change any time soon.
“This is a very contentious subject. A lot of people see this as a personal liberty type of thing.”
Nonetheless, Eric Rieck, chief of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Port Angeles station, said boaters should wear life jackets at all times, regardless of water conditions or ability.
“Any time you’re out on the water you should have your life jacket on, no matter how good a swimmer you are,” he said. “I’m a pretty good swimmer and so is my son—we’re both in the Coast Guard—and we wear our life jackets all the time.”
Shipman’s goal is to change thinking around life jackets so they’re seen as an integral part of boating. “It’s like wearing your helmet and riding a bicycle and putting your seatbelt on in a car,” he said. “You won’t be able to put your life jacket on when there’s an accident.”
Only about one-quarter of adult sailors wear life jackets, a 2008 Coast Guard study found.
Those first few minutes after falling overboard are crucial, Shipman said, since boaters are more likely to drown than die of hypothermia, even in the Pacific Northwest’s frigid waters. Sudden immersion in cold water triggers a gasp reflex that can cause people to lose control of their breathing, start hyperventilating and swallowing water.
“Wearing a life jacket will give you the ability to keep your head above water and maintain control of your breathing,” Shipman said.
If the three boaters killed last week were wearing life jackets, he said, “the chances of them all being rescued would have been very high.”
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