Lifejackets: lifesavers? Or not?

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PaulGooch said:
<snip>As for comments made about being able to swim, or not, the ability to swim is also totally meaningless in the majority of cases. How far can an Olympic swimmer swim, against a 3 knot tide, to get back to the boat ? How far could he swim after his boat has sunk ? Would be make it back to shore, two miles away, in a fast flowing tide ?
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Fast flowing tide could be irrelevant - you are after getting to the nearest object to allow you to exit the water as possible.

Years ago I was helping teach children to sail in Oppies. We had a small Rib and at lunchtime it was moored 10 yards off a beach. The beach had a fast current going past so generally the kids were not allowed to swim. However, one asked for a ride in the Rib - quickly followed by the rest. My response (with instructor approval) was the first person to reach the Rib can have a ride ...
They mostly started out perpendicular to the rib and quickly got taken down with the tide and couldn't swim against it (they had buoyancy aids on) ... then one worked out that if he started 50 yards up stream he could swim out and reach the Rib by swimming the 10 yards out required.... he got the ride.

I do most of my boating in the harbour and solent, I'm a competent swimmer and SWMBO is a good helm. I only put the LJ on when I believe I stand a higher chance of requiring it or when we start going 'offshore'. I rarely bother in the dinghy - it has it's own buoyancy and I'm never more than 100m from shore, less from another boat.
 
timbartlett said:
It's not meant to be. But if you don't like the US data, how about Case 24 in www.maib.gov.uk/publications/safety_digests/2006/safety_digest_3_2006.cfm, where a man died despite wearing an 150N lifejacket? There are countless others.
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This is a somewhat selective quote. Since the life jacket failed to inflate, it is equivalent to not having a life jacket on in the first place.

Life saving equipment has to be properly maintained and checked to operate.

Transferring between ships at sea in small rubber boats was a twice daily occourence in the minesweeper squadron operating in the Bay of Biscay and worked quite well. Hazardous duty life jackets with immersion suits were compulsory but nobody would have gone without, even if they were not.

One dunking occurred where the life jacket operated correctly and the chap nearly died because the tie he was wearing shrunk on contact with the oggin and tightened so much they had to use a knife to saw it clear. Ties were no longer worn after that.

We had boats capsize in beaufort 6/7 and the lads were OK because they were wearing the correct clothing and equipment for the enviroment in which they were operating.

I for one choose to wear a life jacket, with crotch straps (Hint: If male never adjust when sitting down), when travelling to and from my boat and when working on the upper deck. If others choose not to that is there option when they are on their own boat.
 
There are two major problems with aggregated statistics. Firstly they only report what is reported - not what actually happened. Not every incident of drowning is reported, let alone every incident when somebody ends up in the water. They are only counting those that are observed by a reporting body.

Secondly, they treat each incident as equal without analysing the circumstances surrounding the incident. There is much more to be learned from how and where the person came to be in the water. The dominant cause of death in UK coastal waters is falling out of a dinghy or off a pontoon - activities where wearing a LJ is not perhaps as common as it should be.

Any sensible analysis should identify the high risk activities, the way of preventing the incident and only lastly effective strategies for surviving.

Unfortunately this type of analysis cannot compete with simplistic slogans such as we are used to seeing.
 
Mariner69 said:
This is a somewhat selective quote. Since the life jacket failed to inflate, it is equivalent to not having a life jacket on in the first place.
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Why? He was wearing a lifejacket, and he fell in the water. It failed.
But if you don't like Atlantis, how about Ouzo.
Three dead bodies, all wearing inflated lifejackets
Of course, there's a different "Ah but..."
There always is.
 
Mariner69 said:
Since the life jacket failed to inflate, it is equivalent to not having a life jacket on in the first place.

Life saving equipment has to be properly maintained and checked to operate.
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An issue our maritime authorities are wrestling with at the moment is inflatable jackets/yokes that are not being serviced annually.
A recent survey found that a mere 20% of all the inflatable jackets sold in our state are being serviced according to the manufacturers specs.
They retail at $100 and the service fee is $50.

As was mentioned earlier, most of our local fatalities occur from over-turned dinghies, either setting or retrieving lobster pots in conditions that exceed the capabilities of the boats, and because of the close proximity to the shore, LJ's are not worn.
 
The dominant cause of death in UK coastal waters is falling out of a dinghy or off a pontoon *************

Where does this fact come from, out of interest?
 
gjgm said:
The dominant cause of death in UK coastal waters is falling out of a dinghy or off a pontoon *************

Where does this fact come from, out of interest?
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Read the MAIB reports over the last 15 years and add up the number of deaths from this cause compared with others. MAIB does not cover all deaths, so then look at the annual MCGA reports.

There is not a single definitive source as I explained earlier, so you have to do a bit of digging.
 
Tranona said:
Read the MAIB reports over the last 15 years and add up the number of deaths from this cause compared with others. MAIB does not cover all deaths, so then look at the annual MCGA reports.

There is not a single definitive source as I explained earlier, so you have to do a bit of digging.
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OK, so this might be your conclusion rather than a fact. Is 15 years significant for example. Would the result be different if you looked over 5 years (as surely boating has changed). And why dinghys and pontoons.. is that a combined figure, or you mean the top two causes of death?
Can it be right that dinghy sailing is the most lethal form of boating?
Wasnt there some nonsense a while back about safety at sea stats where the figures were distorted by deaths from people driving cars into rivers ! Probably not wearing LJs there either.
 
15 years because that is roughly the length of time the MAIB has been publishing reports.

The period of time is irrelevant. There are some years when there are no deaths from a particular cause. "Statistics" are largely meaningless when trying to make comparisons over time or between different causes of deaths because there are so few. You can only look for commonalities, and falling out of a yacht tender (rather than sailing dinghies) is one of those commonalities.

As I said, there is no definitive source of data - the two main sources (RNLI and MCGA) use different categories to report incidents and not all deaths result in an MAIB investigation. This is a pity because it is only the MAIB style of investigation that considers why the incident occurs and draws conclusions that help understand where the risks are. The rest just count events in a way that suits their requirements - which are not necessarily about understanding causes.
 
The period of time is irrelevant
***
Nonsense; of course it is relevant. Has there been no change or development in boating or equipment over fifteen years ?
 
You only need to try swimming in oilskins once to decide that lifejackets are a good idea, and useless unless worn.
 
Tim

I'm confused.

What point are you making? Are you suggesting that wearing LJ et al is pointless? Or are you suggesting that those who would say definitively that wearing LJs etc will save life are wrong or just being too simplistic in their statements? If the former then demonstrably you are wrong unless you think that survival when falling overboard or otherwise into the noggin is pointless. If the latter then fair enough but this is a forum and we all make oversimplifications in our postings because to do otherwise would take an age and anyway most people will understand the point being made.

I take issue with your analysis of the stats that you supply for similar reasons to those posted by others so no point in rehashing those arguments.

Are you simply being argumentative for the hell of it? Why? You are an educator and I have one of your books [it is very good, well written and easy to understand] but I probably would never have bought if I had first read some of your postings on here.

Cheers

Ian
 
Keen_Ed said:
You only need to try swimming in oilskins once to decide that lifejackets are a good idea, and useless unless worn.
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They are only not useless if you happen to go in ... which isn't a good idea - lifejacket or not! Shouldn't there be more focus on staying OUT of the water ...
 
gjgm said:
The period of time is irrelevant
***
Nonsense; of course it is relevant. Has there been no change or development in boating or equipment over fifteen years ?
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No, I don't think you will find anything meaningful in trying to relate annual statistics of deaths to changes in equipment etc. You could read reports of incidents 15 years ago that could just as easily happen today. For example there is no published evidence that EPIRBs and PLBs have resulted in lives being saved that might have been lost. Despite the huge increase in the number of liferafts sold (a consequence of a typical 50-60% fall in real price) has had no specific impact on foundering incidents, nor lives saved or lost.

As I said there are so few deaths through drowning related to boating and there is very little pattern except the circumstances leading to the deaths.

If you did want to try and explain any changes over time you would have to make so many adjustments for other key variables such as level of activity and weather patterns that the results would be meaningless.

Drowning incidents are rare and random over time. Immersions that do not lead to death are also random, but not rare. However, there is no reliable source of data because there is no obligation to report.

The very low level of deaths is I think the consequence of people being much more aware of the dangers and taking the necessary avoiding action plus our superb rescue services for when things go wrong.
 
fireball said:
They are only not useless if you happen to go in ... which isn't a good idea - lifejacket or not! Shouldn't there be more focus on staying OUT of the water ...
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If accidents never happened, the world woud be a safer place. But accidents do happen, and people - despite taking reasonable precautions not to fall off the boat/tender/pontoon - do fall in.

I've tried swimming in oilskins. It doesn't work. If I hadn't been wearing a lifejacket, I'm not sure I would be here.
 
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It would also be over crowded ... oh it is!

Isn't it usually said that it is better to fix the cause rather than prepare for the effect?
 
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