Grinna 2 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 This may be a contentious issue, and I accept that its only my opinion, but it seems to me that it might be timely to discuss the concept of safety in, on and around the water and what safety actually is. I may be radically out of step with Coastguard, coroners, Maritime NZ and possibly many other people, but I firmly believe that safety does not come from any one thing. A lifejacket, for instance, as useful as it may be under some circumstances, is not a magic talisman. Even a properly fitting, appropriate personal flotation device does not guarantee safety in, on or around water in much the same way that safety does not come from one or more flares, or approved sound signals or even properly displayed and utilised navigation lights. These are all things that can be used to help make you more visible, attract attention, inform of intentions or assist with additional flotation, but they don't provide any guarantees and they don't magically have any intrinsic degree of safety installed into them at manufacture by a mysterious safety elf. Safety, first and foremost, comes from between the ears. 9 large people in an overloaded, small aluminium dinghy in blusterous conditions and marginal seas does not become safe because those people are wearing lifejackets. It is, in my opinion, dangerous to deify a piece of safety equipment the way Coastguard, and others, are currently doing because it gives stupid people the impression that they no longer have to think about what they're doing, the weather conditions they're going out in, the state of their boat, how overloaded it might be, etc, etc because if they wear a lifejacket they'll be safe. The more people realise that there are potentially life-threatening consequences to stupid actions the more they might stop to think about what they're doing. If people think that it's unimportant to be responsible for themselves and that "someone" or something will save them no matter how moronic their behaviour then they will continue to behave like morons. Safety does not come from a thing or from an organisation. It comes from careful consideration of the behaviour and actions that individuals are about to undertake and an understanding and appreciation of the potential consequences of those actions and what it might mean for the safety of those individuals. Safety in, on or around the water resides between your ears. In my opinion, the relentless "wear your lifejacket and you'll be safe" message will not be particularly successful in eliminating drownings because as soon as you develop one way to prevent idiots from drowning, they'll simply develop a more successful idiot. Link to post Share on other sites
banaari 27 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Safety in, on or around the water resides between your ears. Absolutely. Bureaucrats just don't get it... if the attitude and common sense isn't there no amount of prescriptive regulation will help. Link to post Share on other sites
Bad Kitty 252 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 While I agree with everything you wrote Grinna, I think it needs to be understood that you are not dealing with a group of people like the standard cross section of crew.org users. We are talking about trying to get a message thru to people that are so stupid that they probably should be sterilised before the age of 10, which is when some of them appear to start breeding. We are talking about people that drive pissed, put kids in clothes dryers, beat the crap out of each other and live from benefit day to benefit day. If they believe that not eating Ghost Chips & wearing lifejackets help keep you safer, then it's not a bad thing. I know it doesn't replace good seamanship, analysing risk, and even a bit of common sense, but trust me, if you'd seen some of the stupid sh*t out there I have in the last 25 years you'd appreciate anything you can get! Link to post Share on other sites
OYSTR 1 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Agree with Grinna, its using the top 2 inches that makes the difference. IMHO the term "water safety" is an oxymoron - all of the risk can never be eliminated and therefore requires an ounce of commonsense. Unfortunately there are many who don't even have this. Link to post Share on other sites
sealegs 0 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 bloody well said Grinna ! could knot agree more! Link to post Share on other sites
Tiller 2 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 The bureaucrates seem to be dumming every body down which is not very good for the gene pool. Well said Grinna. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 If it were safe I wouldn't be interested. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 I have just gotten a Queensland boat drivers licence(had to as i've been here longer than 3 months), boats over 6hp are all registered here,and must be driven by someone with a licence,its a day long course with a practical exam at the end of the day. Having a licence isnt a cureall,but, it helps weed out the problematic operators,it also gives the authorities a strong point to begin enforcing/educating the 'dangerous/foolhardy' boaties. Every boat has to have a capacity label right beside the drivers station,so, overloading is not a 'i didnt know' thing basic navigation is covered getting weather information is covered crossing of bars is covered Laws /regulations were explained to me waay back in 1979,when i was training to be a traffic cop,as designed for the idiots of our race,those without common sense.... It seems to me that the delinquient /cavalier attitudes of a very few are going to force regulation upon all of us(in nzlnd)........ Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 So very well said Grinna. I used to have quite an involvement with MSA back in the day when it was populated by people who cared about safety at sea. Unfortunately that level of dedication became unpopular as dinosaurs (ex seamen) were replaced by innovative managers (bureaucrats with no idea about the sea) and MNZ as we know it was born. To add insult to injury central government vested power in regional authorities to oversee maritime use as well. What we now have is a bunch of wankers with no collective, in depth knowledge of their area of influence, producing inane rulings, often as not driven by coroners, life jacket salesmen and YNZ policemen. Link to post Share on other sites
benny14 6 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 While I agree with everything you've said Grinna, and you've articulated it far better than I ever could there is only one benefit to having a lifejacket... That is, when (not if in most of these cases) something does go wrong, one has a much better chance of survival, than if one is not wearing one. Now, whether those that get themselves in to that situation deserve to survive is another debate altogether... Link to post Share on other sites
Grinna 2 Posted February 5, 2013 Author Share Posted February 5, 2013 To clarify, I don't have a problem with lifejackets and wearing them. But I do have a problem with the idea that a lifejacket will make you safe. To me, a lifejacket is something that will help keep you alive when everything else has gone wrong. It's the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, rather than the healthy fear of larking about on dangerous cliff tops that prevents you from going over in the first place. Eventually, because some people are too silly to recognise danger or evaluate the risks and consequences, authority gets to the point where it says "you're all idiots and therefore you all have to wear lifejackets, all the time", which to me is using a steamroller to kill an ant. In a quiet bay under still and calm conditions, middle of the day, good visibility if I decide to row ashore from an anchored yacht I HAVE to wear a lifejacket???? If I refuse to wear a lifejacket in the dinghy I'm breaking the law ..... so all they've managed to do is make a reasonable act a criminal act. The crazy thing is if I jump over the side of the dinghy, I'm a swimmer and I don't HAVE to wear a lifejacket .... yet, I'm not going to drown in a dinghy, but I might drown in the water. Part of the attraction to yachting and cruising for me is the self responsibility, the independence and knowing that at all times I'm responsible for the safety of the boat and its passengers .... because with that responsibility comes the freedom to do what I want and go where I want (within certain limits). You start stamping on one side of that equation and it seriously affects the other side. And the biggest problem is you end up giving up freedom for the illusion of safety or security on the other side of the coin. Its not real safety, because if it comes down to a difference between whether you were wearing a lifejacket or not, then there are a whole bunch of other fundamental things that have gone seriously wrong before you got to that point. A lifejacket is part of your system of safety at sea, for sure. If I ever seriously need a lifejacket to help keep me alive I'll be as glad as anyone to have one and be wearing it. But I'm gonna try like hell to make sure that I don't get into the situation where a lifejacket is that important to me. I may make mistakes and end up there, but its certainly my intention to make sensible decisions that mean I never have to test the effectiveness of my lifejacket. I realise that I'm a bit naive and a bit idealistic sometimes, but I'd like to think that educating people to reduce their risk by not doing things that are patently bloody stupid would be a pretty good start in preventing needless deaths by drowning. Not overloading your boat, not going out when the weather is dodgy, checking you've got enough fuel, having communications onboard, etc, etc. Its pretty simple stuff and yet still people ignore this pretty basic stuff and get themselves, and more tragically their kids, into perilous situations. I suppose in some ways this whole lifejacket campaign is understandable. For years they've been pushing the whole package approach to boating safety and for years lots of people have been ignoring it and getting into serious strife. Maybe its got to the point where they figure that some people are too dumb to understand anything other than the simplest of messages, so in that case at least if you get them to wear a lifejacket there's a chance they (or their kids) will survive when they do get into the poo. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Legislating against people putting to sea without adequate fuel, knowledge of the weather or proper navigational instruments would impinge on their personal rights. Far better to wrap them in cotton wool, dacron or a manual inflatable life jacket (that will be no bloody good if they get wiped out by someone who can't keep a decent lookout). Much easier to punish them and raise revenue as well. Link to post Share on other sites
Megwyn 2 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Grinna at his elucidating best Link to post Share on other sites
Ed 143 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 This style of argument seems very reminiscent of the arguments around when wearing seatbelts in cars became mandatory, and wearing a hardhat on a construction site became mandatory. There are loads of well reasoned arguments why you don't have to, but the balance of probabilities says you are better off wearing one than not. Whether they can actually legislate on the issue effectively for the public at large remains to be seen, but I can see it being written into club sailing instructions before much longer. Link to post Share on other sites
Pugwash 0 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 You are spot on Grinna I mostly sail my trailer yacht on the lakes here in the South Island and the idiocy I see just can't be legislated against, simply because the idiots don't give a damn about legislation. Jetskiers and jet boats doing ridiculous speeds a few metres from the shore, other boats and swimmers. Jetskiers with small children sitting on their laps. It just seems that there is a prevalence of the "she'll be right, mate" mentality. Link to post Share on other sites
Bimini Babe 0 Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 This style of argument seems very reminiscent of the arguments around when wearing seatbelts in cars became mandatory, and wearing a hardhat on a construction site became mandatory. There are loads of well reasoned arguments why you don't have to, but the balance of probabilities says you are better off wearing one than not. That's just what I was about to say! Lifejackets are just like seatbelts - driving like a dick can still be deadly, but on balance, you're more likely to survive if you're wearing a seatbelt. I remember as a kid there was the same bash-you-on-the-head-repeatedly-until-you-listen attitude to safety campaigns around seatbelts. But it wasn't to the detriment of other aspects of road safety, or the general message of road safety overall, was it? People, even the "people that are so stupid they should probably be sterilised", surely wouldn't think that, just because they are wearing a seatbelt, they can drive at 150km/h, on icy roads, with no lights on at night... would they? Lifejackets, I would imagine, are focused on simply because as far as the whole matter of water safety goes, they are a relatively easy and cheap thing that everyone can do, which offer very high 'return on investment' (i.e. maximum success in saving lives for minimal financial/time investment). Link to post Share on other sites
PaulR 3 Posted February 6, 2013 Share Posted February 6, 2013 Perhaps the message need changing . . . . Wear a life jacket and drown more slowly . . . . Wear a life jacket and drift ashore . . . eventually . . . . . . somewhere . . . . anywhere . . . Link to post Share on other sites
PaulR 3 Posted February 6, 2013 Share Posted February 6, 2013 Safety does not come from a thing or from an organisation. It comes from careful consideration of the behaviour and actions that individuals are about to undertake and an understanding and appreciation of the potential consequences of those actions and what it might mean for the safety of those individuals. VERY VERY TRUE and WELL SAID May I quote you sometime . . . . Link to post Share on other sites
PaulR 3 Posted February 6, 2013 Share Posted February 6, 2013 MS: The edit button has disappeared on my previous post on this thread, but I can edit my last post. I wanted to change "need" to "needs" Does that help finding the "edit" option stealing elf Link to post Share on other sites
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