More regulations

timbartlett said:
Applied sensibly. Hmmm. If only that could be guaranteed. Then all we would need to do would be to define sensibly. Would it, for instance, mean "applied only to motor boats?"

I wonder how many alcohol related fatalities involve "high powered mobos"?
And how many involve people pottering back to their boats, in the dark, in under-inflated dinghies with slightly dodgy outboards? Or narrowboats, pottering along @ <4kts?

We shall see.
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You just have to read the reports to see what sort of boats are involved in accidents - with or without drink. They simply do not conform to the stereotypes used in general observation. Suspect that PWCs will not be included unless they are specifically defined in the regulations - the last proposals would not have included them, nor many of the boats in which people were actually killed.
 
prv said:
What's that got to do with it?

Pete
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The fact that the resources available to the authorities will automatically limit their ability to test everyone - they will focus on people that are behaving in ways that are potentially dangerous.
 
wadget said:
If you agree that it is a bad idea why do you have a problem with it being made illegal?
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Don't have to. It is already illegal and has been for nearly 10 years. What I don't agree with (along with many others) the need for the prescriptive regulations on "enforcement" as a deterrent when there is little evidence that it is either a problem or the "problem" if there is one will be solved by the regulations as proposed. The law already allows prosecution, either under the Act or under bye laws. It is rarely used which suggests that there are very few cases where it is needed - back to the evidence.

There does not seem to be pressure from harbour authorities etc for extra powers, nor do they seem to make an issue of excessive drinking as a major cause of accidents involving boats. Harbour authorities can already establish bye laws equivalent to the proposed regulations if they wish (as the PLA has done) - but rarely uses the power.
 
timbartlett said:
Applied sensibly. Hmmm. If only that could be guaranteed. Then all we would need to do would be to define sensibly. Would it, for instance, mean "applied only to motor boats?"

I wonder how many alcohol related fatalities involve "high powered mobos"?
And how many involve people pottering back to their boats, in the dark, in under-inflated dinghies with slightly dodgy outboards? Or narrowboats, pottering along @ <4kts?

We shall see.
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People pottering in dinghies with dodgy outboards are not putting anyone other than themselves in any significant danger. People travelling at high speed or on very large boats in confined waters are potentially very dangerous to small boats and swimmers.
 
Tranona said:
Don't have to. It is already illegal and has been for nearly 10 years. What I don't agree with (along with many others) the need for the prescriptive regulations on "enforcement" as a deterrent when there is little evidence that it is either a problem or the "problem" if there is one will be solved by the regulations as proposed. The law already allows prosecution, either under the Act or under bye laws. It is rarely used which suggests that there are very few cases where it is needed - back to the evidence.

There does not seem to be pressure from harbour authorities etc for extra powers, nor do they seem to make an issue of excessive drinking as a major cause of accidents involving boats. Harbour authorities can already establish bye laws equivalent to the proposed regulations if they wish (as the PLA has done) - but rarely uses the power.
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Laws that have to be applied are laws that have failed. We use the fear of the law as the incentive to behave responsibly. I suspect that most boat owners are currently under the impression that they are free to have a skinfull without risk of prosecution.
 
wadget said:
If you agree that it is a bad idea why do you have a problem with it being made illegal?
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The pending law applies to anyone who "is exercising, or purporting or attempting to exercise, a function in connection with the navigation of the ship". On most British yachts it is hard to define which of the people on board are in this category. For the law to work you would need compulsory licensing, so that the identity of the person in charge of the vessel is known (and so that licence can be taken away from persistent offenders if necessary, as otherwise Mr Sunseeker will happily keep paying the fines). So if you support the pending law, I believe you will have to accept the likelihood that operator licensing will follow, and that vessel licensing may not be far behind, with all the cost and bureaucracy we see on the Continent.

I'd rather use existing law and not pass more laws that are out of proportion with the extent of the problem.
 
awol said:
If that is a reference to the "Sea Snake" they neither hit a harbour wall nor was there evidence that all 6 or any were "drunk" although the alcohol levels of the helms were reported.
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You are correct. The boat hit a rocky foreshore just inside the harbour entrance, rather than a wall. The report stated that "The postmortem examination toxicology tests on the bodies of the two helmsmen showed that both were nearly 2 1/2 times over the drink driving limit for motor vehicles".

Given that the proposed limits in the drink boating legislation are the same as for drink driving, it is reasonable to assume that this would have been a sound basis for a successful prosecution. However, there is no definitive evidence that the cause of the accident was that the helmsman was drunk. However no prosecutions were brought because the two people concerned were dead.

If you look at most of the other cases (4 in total) out of the 35 that resulted in deaths or injuries you will find only one where drink is clearly a cause. In all the others (such as this one) there is only an association - in other words the casualties had been known to be drinking, but there was no evidence that drink was a direct cause of the accident. In one other case (Morphil) drink was shown as a contributory factor but not a cause, and there were no casualties.
 
BTW, the Ragwort Control Act -- same year as the Railway and Transport Safety Act. It's only two pages, most of which is taken up with coats of arms and preamble about her most excellent majesty and lords spiritual and temporal and such-like guff. [/QUOTE]

Fantastic!

I didn't know about that.

That's now my /second/ favourite piece of legislation, after the Interpretation (Stating The Obvious) Act 1978:

References to distance.
In the measurement of any distance for the purposes of an Act, that distance shall, unless the contrary intention appears, be measured in a straight line on a horizontal plane.

References to time of day.
Subject to section 3 of the Summer Time Act 1972 (construction of references to points of time during the period of summer time), whenever an expression of time occurs in an Act, the time referred to shall, unless it is otherwise specifically stated, be held to be Greenwich mean time.

References to the Sovereign.
In any Act a reference to the Sovereign reigning at the time of the passing of the Act is to be construed, unless the contrary intention appears, as a reference to the Sovereign for the time being
 
maby said:
Hopefully, this is the key - applied sensibly.

There's a real danger of overreacting to the prospect of laws against drink-boating. I like a drink as much as the next man, but I don't have a problem with a law that effectively resricts me to no more than one glass of wine, or one beer before taking charge of my boat. If you are pottering along the river at five or six knots, your chances of being stopped and tested are pretty much zero.
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That is not what will happen. We have drinking/boating laws in Australia. Most testing is done on holiday weekends. Water police go to a heavily populated anchorage and test everybody at anchor, many more tests can be applied that way.

Anone on the move will be tested only after an accident or a violation has already occurred.

Laws to be applied sensibly hahahahahahaha.
 
BobPrell said:
That is not what will happen. We have drinking/boating laws in Australia. Most testing is done on holiday weekends. Water police go to a heavily populated anchorage and test everybody at anchor, many more tests can be applied that way.

Anone on the move will be tested only after an accident or a violation has already occurred.

Laws to be applied sensibly hahahahahahaha.
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Well, fortunately our law proposed here specifically applys to "ships that are under way", so cannot be applied to boats at anchor.
 
Why always blame the EU?

chanelyacht said:
With regard to "drink boating", the current situation is limits apply for those professionally in charge of a vessel - i.e. paid skippers, captains, crew etc. The MCA do not have an army of breathtesters, the process is to request qualified police assistance in instances where we have reason to believe alcohol played a part in whatever happened.

Unpaid members of the public are not affected by this - although many harbours already have navigation byelaws in place to cover similar circumstances.

The provision for leisure boaters is in the appropriate act, but has not been enacted. The MAIB exists to report on accidents without blame , and it's a bit far fetched to claim they're part of some great conspiracy to enact the provisions.

Regardless of what the law says, why navigate when impaired?

And if you don't like the ever increasing amount of statutory instruments (and I don't), then vote to get us out of the EU and hold our politicians to account.
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I agreed with you up to the last paragraph. At that point you destroyed a good argument just to bring in your personal bete noir.
 
"The fact that the Marchioness was used as a trigger for drink-boat laws is a classic example: neither of the vessels involved were recreational craft, and alcohol was not listed among the contributory factors! So the Marchioness is irrelevant. But I bet most people wouldn't remember that: they would just remember an accident in which a lot of people died. "




"The inquiry heard that Captain Henderson had been drinking on the day of the accident, though it was believed no alcohol remained in his system by the time of the crash. "
 
oldgit said:
"The fact that the Marchioness was used as a trigger for drink-boat laws is a classic example: neither of the vessels involved were recreational craft, and alcohol was not listed among the contributory factors! So the Marchioness is irrelevant. But I bet most people wouldn't remember that: they would just remember an accident in which a lot of people died. "




"The inquiry heard that Captain Henderson had been drinking on the day of the accident, though it was believed no alcohol remained in his system by the time of the crash. "
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The MAIB report on the Marchioness is avialable on the MAIB website. It's a long report, so it is in several sections. The findings and recommendations are here:http://www.maib.gov.uk/cms_resources/marchioness and bowbelle part V.pdf They do not mention alcohol as a contributory factor to the accident, not do they make any recommendations about alcohol legislation. Mind you, that was back in the "good old days" when Chief Inspectors signed the reports personally and included their professional titles (Captain, Admiral etc) after their signatures.

In this context, the key part of the BBC report (12 years after the event) is "The inquiry heard that Captain Henderson had been drinking on the day of the accident, though it was believed no alcohol remained in his system by the time of the crash.".

It may also be significant that although the Captain of the Bowbelle was prosecuted at least twice in connection with the collision, he was not convicted.
 
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