•	Features
•	Hotline
•	ECO
•	Destinations
•	Gear
•	Skills

< Nov/Dec 2002
	ECO
ACA Releases Jet Ski Report Study finds craft account for 55 percent of all vessel collisions

This summer’s fatal collision between a jet ski and a 12-year-old rafter on a lake in Colorado’s Front Range has given a boost to the fight against personal watercraft (PWC) nationwide. Although they comprise less than 10 percent of all vessels, PWC are involved in 55 percent of all collisions between vessels occurring on U.S. waters. This finding is from a report recently released by the American Canoe Association (ACA). Hostile Waters: The Impacts of Personal Watercraft Use on Waterway Recreation analyzes the last five years of available accident data (1996-2000) collected by the United States Coast Guard (USCG) and state boating agencies.

The report studies those accidents that place other waterway users at greatest risk—such as collisions—and their causes. It concludes that PWC account for a disproportionate amount of all boating accidents (higher than the proportion of automobile accidents that involve drunk driving). Additional findings include the fact that over 70 percent of all PWC accidents are collisions with vessels, fixed or floating objects, or people (the average for other vessel types is about 40 percent); roughly 80 percent of all PWC accidents involve behavior-related causes such as reckless operation, excessive speed, or operator inattention (the average for other vessel types is roughly 45 percent); and PWC are more than three times as likely to strike a person swimming in the water as other vessel types (over the study period PWC were involved in more "struck by boat" incidents than all other vessel types combined).

"These findings confirm people's worst fears about the threat PWC use poses to the recreating public," says ACA Director of Conservation and Public Policy David Jenkins. "The degree of disparity between PWC collision rates and those of other vessels is stunning, and it’s particularly troubling that existing regulatory approaches show no sign of closing that gap."

In addition to analyzing five years of accident data, Hostile Waters examines accident narratives contained in state accident reports, reviews newspaper accounts of accidents and recounts interviews with state and federal boating officials. It concludes that PWC use, which is allowed on over 98 percent of the nation's surface waters, not only poses a serious and disproportionate safety threat, but diminishes the ability of the public to enjoy other water-related activities, degrades the quality of recreational waters and adversely impacts a wide variety of wildlife. It also calls for strong new measures to address the impacts of PWC use on other waterway users, including establishing zones that limit high-speed PWC use to specific areas, prohibiting use on lakes of less than 500 acres and on river segments less than 1,000 feet wide, increasing criminal penalties for reckless or negligent operation, improving accident reporting, and prohibiting PWC use on most federally protected waterways.

—Info: (703) 451-0141.