Recreational Boating Safety – 2021 Boating Accident Statistics

Bob CurrieBy Bob Currie, Recreational Boating Safety Specialist
U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary Base Galveston Flotilla
The US Coast Guard 2021 Recreational Boating Accident Statistics are out, and there were some improvements over last year. In 2021 the Coast Guard counted 4,439 accidents that involved 658 deaths, 2,641 injuries, and about $67.5 million dollars of damage to property as a result of recreational boating accidents. The fatality rate was 5.5 deaths per 10,000 registered vessels. This rate represents a 15.4% decrease from the 2020 rate of 6.5 deaths per 100,000 registered vessels. The number of accidents decreased 14.2% and the number of injuries decreased 17.2%. This is good news for recreational boating safety specialists, but we know we have a long way to go.

I would like to sincerely thank the boaters who reduced their chances of being included in these statistics by taking a safe boating course, always wearing their life jackets, operating responsibly, and banning alcohol from their boats. There is always room for improvement, and the first step is to look at where the problems still lie.

Top Five Accident Types
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a table saves a lot of words too:

  1. “Collision with recreational vessel” means someone ran into another boat.
  2. “Collision with fixed object” often means someone ran into the dock (or the jetty, as is often the case around Galveston).
  3. “Flooding/swamping” often means someone left the drain plug out, the boat was overloaded, or the boat was operated in too heavy seas for it to handle.
  4. “Grounding” means the boat ran in water too shallow to float it.
  5. “Falls overboard” often means someone wasn’t properly seated in the boat or the boat operator operated recklessly, tossing his passengers out.

The cause of the top two primary accident types is simple: failure to follow the Rules of the Road, otherwise known as the Navigation Rules. That is, the boat operator didn’t post a proper lookout or they failed to take action soon enough to avoid a collision. The rules are quite simple. They tell you exactly what to do in overtaking, meeting and passing, and in crossing situations. They tell you how to operate when visibility is restricted. They tell you what lights to display and how to display them at night and when visibility is restricted.

One may think a fall overboard shouldn’t be too harmful; the water is much softer than asphalt, right? Yet falls overboard resulted in more deaths than all other primary accident types combined (170 vs. 141). Let me answer the obvious question with two words: drowning and trauma. People get run over by the boat they fell from, or don’t have a life jacket and drown.

Life Jacket Use
If you end up in the water without a life jacket, you will most likely die. It is that simple. The safest life jacket is one that turns your head upwards. That is the one that will save you if you are knocked unconscious, and this happens in many cases. If you are knocked unconscious when you hit the water and you are not wearing a life jacket, your chance of survival is zero. Only Aquaman can breathe underwater. When you look at the table below you will see that there were 84 deaths by drowning (10 more than last year) even though a life jacket was worn. This illustrates why it is important to wear a properly fitting life jacket that returns your head to an upright position and holds your head above water. Not just any life jacket will do. You need one that is right for the type of water (inland, near shore, or offshore) and one that fits you well.

  1. Drowning happens because people end up in the water; 82% of those who drowned weren’t wearing a life jacket.
  2. Trauma is force to the body that causes injury or death. Trauma often happens when you get run over by your own boat or by another boat. The statistics show that you have a much higher chance of surviving trauma if you are wearing a life jacket. A life jacket enhances your chances of being found in time to save you from your injuries.
  3. Cardiac arrest often happens when you end up in the water if you are not in decent physical shape. Some cases where cardiac arrest was the cause of death may have been prevented if the person had simply stayed with the boat rather than trying to swim to shore.
  4. Hypothermia is exposure to water colder than 86 degrees for a period long enough to cause organ failure. That can be 48 hours as in one local case, or it could be minutes if the water is below 60 degrees. While it may look like you have a better chance of survival if you don’t wear a life jacket, the reality is you die from drowning before your organs fail from hypothermia if you aren’t wearing a life jacket.
  5. Carbon monoxide is always present near a running gasoline engine or a propane stove. It floats on the surface of the water, so never swim near a boat that has its engine running. Consider converting your galley to all electric equipment.

Contributing Factors
There are several things that boaters do that enhance their chances of dying on the water. Accidents never have just one cause. There are always contributing factors. Without the contributing factors the accident probably would not have happened. If we were to try to place the contributing factors into similar groups, I would choose the ignorance group and the negligence group. The ignorance group consists of factors that you should know about but you haven’t taken the time to take a boater safety course. The negligence group contains the same factors (except for alcohol use, which is always negligence), but in this case the boat operator knows what he should know but chooses to ignore the requirements anyway. Ignorance of the Rules of the Road is high up on the list of contributing factors. You can’t see it on the list below? It is listed as “Navigation Rules Violation.” If you are in an accident with your car, there is a possibility that you could be held blameless for the accident; that is, it was 100% the other driver’s fault. Well, it doesn’t work that way on the water. Both parties share the blame. Always. You have an absolute duty to avoid a collision on the water.

  1. Operator inattention is still at the top of the list of contributing factors of accidents. New boaters don’t understand the implications of having a vessel with no brakes. If you have two boats approaching each other at 30 mph, the closing speed is 88 feet per second. Two boats that are a quarter mile away from each other running 30 mph are 15 seconds from collision. If you think that 500 feet is enough distance to keep behind a boat traveling in the same direction as your boat, you are 11 seconds from ramming that boat if you are moving 30 mph and the boat ahead suddenly stops. Try this experiment with a stopwatch: 1) Start the stopwatch; 2) turn around in your chair; 3) say “Rebecca, get back in your seat and leave your brother alone!”; 4) turn back around in your seat; 5) stop your stopwatch. So, how fast were you going when you rammed the boat ahead of you?
  2. Operator inexperience is ranked second, the same as last year. There is evidence that boating activity rose significantly during the pandemic, and that boat purchases by new (inexperienced) boaters significantly rose. Many of those boaters failed to take the required (by their age) boater safety course.
  3. Improper lookout was #3 last year and this year. Even if you have the “right of way” under the Rules of the Road, you are still responsible for avoiding a collision. Having a proper lookout (all directions covered) is required at all times.
  4. Machinery failure is often caused by lack of maintenance or overtaxing the equipment. When is the last time you lubricated your steering arm?
  5. Excessive speed was #4 last year. Maybe people are learning to control their boats better. Going fast on a boat is just so much fun. To borrow from Jack Nicholson’s character in “A Few Good Men”: “The Speed? You can’t handle the speed!” There are boats out there with 1,000 hp engines on them. I belong to a large boating club whose members all have boats made by the same manufacturer and three fourths of the posts on the group website are questions asking how to make their boat go faster. When you are running WOT (wide open throttle) and trimmed up all the way you just think you have control of your boat.
  6. Alcohol use climbed from #7 position to #6 position as a contributing factor. Understand that even so there were more alcohol related deaths in 2020 (115) than in 2021 (86). Since there was an overall improvement in accident statistics, including alcohol, we can take this as a positive, even though alcohol use climbed in rank.
  7. Force of wave/wake moved up the list from last year. Force of wake has flipped many a boat. You are responsible for all accidents and damages that are caused by your wake. Observe all No Wake zones.
  8. Navigation rules violation means failing to follow the Rules of the Road. Whenever I do a Vessel Safety Check, I ask the owner if they know the Rules of the Road. My most common response is “Yeah, I think so.” No, they don’t. In our area we have all sorts of vessels from tiny skiffs all the way up to super tankers and container vessels. There is a pecking order that tells which type of vessel must keep out of the way of other types of vessels. Shame on you if you don’t know it. No, sailing vessels do NOT always have the “right of way.” In fact, a sailing vessel underway shall keep out of the way of (1) a vessel not under command, (2) a vessel restricted in her ability to maneuver, and (3) a vessel engaged in fishing.
  9. Hazardous waters- they are located on your GPS and fishing maps. Why do boat operators think they have to anchor five feet off the jetty? Sometimes the weather creates hazardous waters. A super low tide can create hazards just below the water’s surface. Look for shoaling in areas not noted on charts whenever there is a super low tide. Shoaling is the effect by which surface waves entering shallower water change in wave height. In shallow water non-breaking waves will increase in wave height as the wave packet enters shallower water. Shoaling is a visual effect, so if you decide to run your boat at night you will lose this effect as a warning. Below is a picture I took of shoaling above an oyster reef.
  10. Weather is #10 on the contributing factor list. We had a lot of storms out there in the Gulf of Mexico this past year. For $100 you can have a radio that talks to the Coast Guard and also gives you up to date weather information.

Shoal in Galveston East Bay

Summary
It’s hard to put a positive spin on a year’s worth of statistics that show an improvement over the last year because the statistics still chronicle a great deal of death, injury, and property damage. Even so, we did improve considerably over last year, although there is a vast amount of improvement yet to go to make recreational boating as safe as we want it to be. Please share these statistics with your boating family, friends, and neighbors. It will take a collective effort to continue to improve recreational boating safety, but every life saved counts.

For more information on boating safety, please visit the Official Website of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Boating Safety Division at www.uscgboating.org. Questions about the US Coast Guard Auxiliary or our free Vessel Safety Check program may be directed to me at [email protected]. I am available to perform free Vessel Safety Checks in my area, and I will come to your location to perform them. SAFE BOATING!

[Jun-21-2022]

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