pjc wrote:
What I do not get is that it is over any random 5 days?why not go the whole hog and hammer it full time using volunteers until a certain part of the boating gets the idea not to break the rules,how much time do you spend on educating??ads on tv about drunk driving but we still drinking/driving(loosely speaking)
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People being people, the ones that speed or don't wear jackets will mostly carry on doing it and the level of enforcement that is affordable will still miss a lot of them. Just like drink driving etc. So then you can up the level of enforcement because the problem isn't fixed, but then you need to pay for it. So then you up the fine levels and do more inspections to issue more tickets to make more money. All good except the guys who think they can't afford life jackets certainly can't afford big fines and then go and buy life jackets etc etc. Then we get boat registration fees to pay for enforcement costs.
How about parking a couple of guys at each boat ramp saying "show me your jackets" before each boat launches. They could have a stock of life jackets in their truck and a mobile eftpos machine. Be much cheaper than running a bunch of boats around at sea, and get better coverage, and handout other safety info about communications etc, plus hand out safe fish handling, seabird info as well. Then just need a smaller number of boats in key areas watching speeds.
I hate the thought that we are going to end up funding a new enforcement agency whose job it will be to come and interfere with my limited time on the water. Once that gets established it won't stop at checking for life jackets on suspicious boats. It will become stop any boat you see and do a full 'safety inspection' then issue as many tickets as you can because we need the money to pay you.
Let's keep the focus on education and appropriate enforcement. Not create a maritime gorilla for soaking up public funds. 16 people died in recreational boating accidents last year. Not 1600, not 160. Most were males over 40 years old. Not children. What would happen if we didn't commit potentially $millions' to these campaigns and spent it on say childrens health care, or on better road safety etc? Would we save more lives?
I actually support what they are doing this weekend. Timing is right at early season, messages are right - jackets and speed nice and simple. Hopefully they have hit the boat ramps hard as well. Just hope this doesn't do the usually bureaucratic thing and grow into yet another overweight public office trying to justify it's existence at our cost.