Alcohol and boat lore run hand in hand, since ships are christened with bottles of champagne. But newer studies in boat safety have found that mixing alcohol and boats can be deadly.
Boat safety researchers have found that you have an exponentially higher risk of dying in a boating accident for every drink you have.
The statistics are alarming. An average size male is thirty percent more likely to be killed on a boat even after only a half of one beer.
Indeed, if you have a blood alcohol level approaching 0.25, which is roughly three times your legal limit, this creates a situation where you have fifty times more a chance of dying than a passenger or boater who is not drinking. Boat safety begins with knowing to leave the alcohol at home when you go out.
State boat safety standards actually permit operators to drink while boating, but most researchers recommend that having no alcohol on board or in your system is the safest way to boat.
To compare statistics, they gathered interviews from almost four thousand boaters in North Carolina and Maryland, and used boat safety rulings only in cases where breath alcohol levels were tested.
Only operators over the age of 18 were counted in the study.
In this boat safety study, there were about twenty-five deaths a year.
Eighty percent were drownings, and men were the deceased in 93% of water fatalities.
People have died while water-skiing, towing other vessels, and sailing, but most fatalities were of people cruising or fishing.
Of all the boaters who died, 55 percent had positive blood alcohol content. These boat safety statistics showed that the chances of dying on a boat increase by 52 times if you have a blood alcohol level of 0.25, as compared with sober boaters.
But the statistics also showed that you are much more likely to die while boating even if you have consumed smaller amounts of alcohol.
Boat safety and alcohol don’t mix well, and they shouldn’t be mixed at all.
