Massachusetts Kayak legislation alert

[djlewis]

Someone on paddling net reported a couple of "Kayak Safety" bills on the state legislative docket, but no details known yet. Anybody know what's up, and whether action is indicated?

--David.

http://www.paddling.net/message/showThread...vice&tid=279282

[chpaton]

It's nice to know that in the time it took me to register on this site you were able to see my message on P-Net at post a link to it here.

My job requires me to track certain pieces of legislation, so I will be watching these as well and will post the specifics here and other places if there are items to be concerned about.

A point of interest the about the two primary sponsors: Gomes represents a district around Orleans and Straus represent a district around Fairhaven, another sponsor Turkington represents Falmouth. I'm a bit concerned that Gomes's bill in particular may be a reaction to the tragic accident in Chatham last year.

[djlewis]

> It's nice to know that in the time it took me to register on this site

> you were able to see my message on P-Net at post a link to it here.

Just lucky timing! ;-)))

Yes, we know quite a bit about the Chatham incident -- two women died -- and its legislative aftermath. It's discussed here -- http://www.nspn.org/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID3/5338.html

Sounds like the Gomes bill -- which, at last sighting was only to extend the PFD requirement from three seasons to all four -- is back.

I myself think that's a good idea. I realize no law alone will really help much. But if nothing else, it will give instructors and other safety noodges another fairly powerful line of attack to convince people to wear PFDs all the time.

But of course, the libertarians among us may disagree with all this. ;-)))

In fact, a three-season law sends a very poor message, that PFDs are only needed ~some~ of the time. But we can hardly go back on that one now, so plunging ahead to all four seasons at least improves a bad bill (which, in itself, shows how these things can go wrong.)

I don't know anything about the Straus bill.

--David.

[Guest guest]

http://www.nspn.org/htdocs/dcforum/DCForumID3/5338.html

It looks like the same one you posted last June ?

[Michael_Crouse]

>I don't know anything about the Straus bill.

A search on the mass gov site turned up this

http://www.mass.gov/legis/bills/house/ht03264.htm

But this doesn't seem to be kayak related.

[chpaton]

It's probable that Rep. Gomes' bill MAY be a refiling of the one she filed last session at the request of the parents of the two girls who drowned in Chatham. The complete text of last sessions bill is as follows:

"AN ACT RELATIVE TO KAYAKS.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Chapter 90B of the General Laws is hereby amended by inserting after section 5B the following section:—

Section 5C. Any person aboard a Kayak shall wear at all times a Coast Guard approved personal flotation device of Type 1, 11, or 111. Kayaks shall also be equipped with a compass and a whistle."

Note well the lack of distinction regarding the different types of kayaks used for different purposes! The bill above DID NOT PASS last year. If this bill or one like it passes everyone will be required to wear a PFD at all time, and carry a compass and whistle regardless of circumstances.

You should also know that Chapt 90B applies to all of the waters and waterways within the state, as well as coastal waters. In addition the existing chapt. does not define what the law considers a kayak, a compass, or a whistle.

Bottom line - writing a good legislation takes more than good intentions - it requires a critical & logical viewpoint, attention to detail, and a desire to craft cost effective and enforceable law.

[chpaton]

Text for bills being filed for the 2005 session is not available yet on Mass.gov - the Straus bill you reference was from the 2004 session.

The House docket for the 2005 session (which is available on Mass.gov) indicates Rep. Straus' intent to file a bill specifically related to "Kayak safety".

I have contacted Rep Straus' office and requested a copy of the bill - I will post the text here if and when I get it.

[djlewis]

Someone here said that the whistle and compass were stripped from the bill at some point. Looking here, I see only the PFD -- whoops, the whistle and compass are mentioned later on. http://www.vsv.cape.com/~harharb/ciha/kayakersmissing2.html

If it's only 4-season PFD, that would be good. You don't need a compass on the river in front of the dock. Many (most) people have no idea how to use a compass. How do you define a whistle? Etc. I bet those were there becasue lots of folks said that Jagoda and Aronoff would have been saved by one of those, though it's not necessarily so.

PFD's have the advantage of being supported and standardized by the Coast Guard.

My vote would be for NSPN to support and promote that bill if it's just PFD; certainly not to oppose it. We should probably oppose any whistle and compass clause as diluting the PFD part, no matter how well-intenioned. Just my $000.000002.

--David.

[Brian Nystrom]

If the intent of this bill is to save lives, then it's VERY poorly contrived. If that's the intent, then the PFD reglatation should be extended to ALL boaters on ALL boats below a certain length, with 25' being as good starting point, since there are far more deaths in other craft than there are in kayaks. For that matter, there are more deaths in canoes than kayaks. It's bad enough that we've been singled out with the 3 season PFD regulation. If we allow ourselves to be discriminated against with this new regulation, we'll have no one but ourselves to blame when more Draconian measures are eventually enacted. Let's not kid yourselves, this new regulation is not going to prevent all kayak deaths. The next time some kids dies in a kayak, you can expect more ill-conceived, reactionary legislation.

There is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for PFD's, whistles, compasses or other equipment to be forced on kayakers if they do not apply to other boaters.

[jason]

I tend to agree Kayaks should be bound by the same rulese as other boats.

The question is should the other boaters be required to use PFD's or should the kayak rules be relaxed.

-Jason

[Brian Nystrom]

While I'm philosophically opposed to "nanny government" legislation, from a practical standpoint, I can accept a mandatory PFD statute as long as it's not discriminatory, since wearing a PFD is simply common sense and it would be very difficult to argue against it without sounding like an idiot. Water safety is water safety and one dead boater is no different than another. What's good for us is good for them; that's the point that we need to make. That's equally hard to argue against without sounding like an idiot. Sometimes, you have to box politicians into a corner in order to get them to do the right thing.

[Wayne Smith]

As we learned here in CT, it has more to do with the fact that kayaks are considered to be vermin by wealthy shoreline residents than it has to do with any falsely stated legislative intent (Did I just say politicians are liars??????). There's also an issue of expanding taxation many times, too.

Kayakers ARE being singled out. We'll just have to get used to that idea. The popularity of our sport is coming back to bite us.

Wayne

[christopherG]

David, with all due respect, a sweeping statement, if ever I saw one! You may be correct; but...

[djlewis]

The fact of the matter is, a kayaker is a lot more likely to wind up in the water than a power boater -- a very lot. And in general sea kayaking is a lot more dangerous than power boating, on a boater-hour basis, probably by at least two orders of magnitude. (One could argue about sailing and PWC's of course...)

So, you can talk about discrimination in the abstract all you want, but convincing legislators or the public that kayaks are "just the same" as power boats for safety is a very tough job -- perhaps impossible.

Besides that, I'd rather see us take responsibility for our own sport, and not get into a "I want what they've got" mentality. When some power boaters, sailors or PWC rats go in the drink and die because they lacked PFDs, at least arguably, there will be calls to put them under the PFD law too.

I know this next item will probably irritate the "treat us like other boaters" folks even more, but it is the law in almost all states that ~kids~ have to wear PFDs on ~any~ boat under way. And the coast guard says so in the remaining states. So, I guess you could say that kayakers are being treated like children with the existing law and moreso with the proposed one. Maybe, but so what.

See http://www.auxguidanceskills.info/press/paddle-deaths.html

(Also, that article seems to think the Gomes ammendment has already passed -- wassup?)

--David.

[donperry]

NSPN is a very small and transient membership of elitist paddlers with a relatively high level of experience and expertise. While it is part of the kayaking community in Massachusetts it certainly does not represent the hundreds of people that kayak here. The club already mandates PFD’s at all of its floating events. Isn’t that enough?

I want no part if NSPN is to publish support for this poorly thought out law.

A PFD for each individual is already required onboard all vessel types and that’s the way it should stay. The choice to wear it or not should be that of the individual and not that of the Massachusetts legislature. It’s bad enough that actually wearing the PFD is required on kayaks from September to May. Why are kayaks singled out for harassment amongst all the other treacherous vessels on the water? Why should kayakers with excellent safety records loose the right to choose? Why should law enforcement be compelled to harass people who are paddling safely during the summer months?

There is no good reason for this legislation. It’s a teary-eyed over-reaction to the fatal results of careless choices Aronoff and Jagoda made at Ayer Lane on October 12, 2003.

[djlewis]

> There is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for PFD's, whistles, compasses or other

> equipment to be forced on kayakers if they do not apply to other

> boaters.

Ok, so you don't mind being told to carry a PFD on board -- I think ~all~ boaters are required by law to do that. How about other regulations which are actually lighter for small, human-powered craft, like those relating to VHF radios? Will you go with the rules that apply to power boats? Better not argue special considerations for kayaks, since that cuts both ways. ;-))

That said, I do see the point about not making laws for this sort of thing in general -- though I really don't want to get into what amounts to an ideological discussion of general principles.

If there were no kayak PFD law in Massachusetts now, I'd probably agree it's good to let sleeping dogs lie. But the three-season law we have now is so bad -- it sends an absolutely terrible message -- that it really might be a good idea to "fix" it. And since anything perceivable as ~reducing~ safety requirements is obviously not in the cards, perhaps kayaking (apart from other forms of boating) might really be well-served by making it an all-the-time-PFD law.

After all, we really ~do~ want to encourage all-the-time PFD use in the sport where we are active and promoting safety, that is, kayaking. Having a law does help that effort.

--David.

[mccumial]

Without even getting into David's "kayakers are more likely to go in the water" argument, which is probably true, or whether this is a knee jerk reaction to the unfortunate deaths off Chatam, any law that targets kayaks in specific misses the point. I'd be all for a safety law that targeted "unmotorized watercraft under 25'" becuase not only is it more fair to us kayakers, it recognozes that other craft of similar size and characteristics pose the same dangers. A canoe is just as likely to tip as a kayak, a row boat is just as likely to get lost on the fog as a kayak.

Besides what definition of "kayak" are the authors of these bill using? Will sit-on-tops be counted? Open cockpit doubles? Kayaks paddled by british guys who insist on calling them "canoes"? How about c1s?

ps. I'm not saying that power boats be left out of silly "nanny" regulations, but I do think that are a different class of boat.

[KayakDan]

Fact is,even if the legislature passes a law regarding mandatory safety equiptment,there's almost nobody available to enforce it. I don;t think the Coast Guard has any jurisdiction regarding a state law. The best they could do is warn somebody that they are not in compliance with the law.

Aside from an occasional harbormaster,when have you ever seen anybody from a Mass. State agency on the water? I think I have seen the MA "Environmental Police" twice in seven years.

Aside from a PFD,any other part of the law is going to require close up inspection of every kayak-just won't happen.

I would rather see a law requiring boat retailers to provide safety information and a list of approved providers of kayak safety training to boat purchasers.

To be effective-don't mandate-educate!

[chpaton]

I wouldn't put much faith in the Coast Guard Aux's ability to determin what bills do and don't make it all the way thru the legislative process in Mass.

The brief summarized process is: filing, referral to committe, approval by committe, approval by the legislature, engrossment, approval by the governor. Since Mass has a bicameral legislature the process of filing thru committee to approval has to happen in both the house and senate - differences in similar bills have to be worked out by "joint committee" before final approval and referral to the Governor.

Gomes' bill didn't make it last year - it got derailed somewhere along the way (hence the suspected re-file this year) You can search the on-line text of Chapt. 90B of the MGL and will not find the Gomes amendment. Likewise an online search of the "Acts of 2004" also comes up empty.

She is trying this ill written piece again!

[Brian Nystrom]

...but unfortuately, it doesn't have that feel of "decisive action" that makes the great unwashed masses feel all warm and fuzzy, and wins votes. There is no doubt that education is far more effective than unenforceable laws that will be flouted with impunity by anyone who cares to. It just doesn't play as well.

[Brian Nystrom]

...but if the point of the law is to save live, percentages are irrelevant. For example, if 2 kayers die per year on average and 10 boaters in other craft do, where would the law have the most potential to save lives? You've got five times the opportunity to save lives if you go after other boaters than if you go after kayakers. If nothing else, this points out the ridiculousness of targeting any single boater group.

Historically, it seems to be more readily acceptable that power boaters die, for some inexplicable reason. Perhaps it's similar to the fact that we take high automobile fatality numbers in stride; I don't know. As I've said before, the fact that two young girls died in kayaks last year seems to have caused a lot more of an uproar than it would have if it had been a couple of grizzly old guys out fishin'. That ain't right!

[JohnHuth]

Shirley Gomes is my representative. I volunteered my services to NSPN to speak with her. The main consultant she has was Tom Leach, the Harbormaster in Harwichport. I was within only a few hundred meters of the accident when the girls went out, so I probably am tainted with some emotion over this episode - on the other hand, I had fun that day and two people died in the same conditions.

My main problem in talking with Shirley Gomes and Tom Leach is that I don't hear a clear consensus with this group (NSPN). If I hear a clear consensus, I will be happy to carry it to Shirley.

There are a lot of "what-if's" E.g. if the girls were wearing gear for immersion (a cotton tee shirt over a bathing suit when the water temp is 53 degrees???), if the girls stayed within sight of land, if they had even done something as simple as paying attention to the direction of the wind, it wouldn't have happened. No Flares, no VHF, no decent kayaks, no practice, no knowledge of conditions, no compass, no whistle, no air horn, no PFD etc etc...they did just about everything wrong.

[Brian Nystrom]

Your last paragraph sums up why such knee-jerk, band-aid approaches to safetly legislation are basically worthless. Does anyone know if the girls even knew how to use a compass? Do the Rep. and Harbormaster realize how limited the range of a whistle is, especially in fog and wind? Once they capsized, the girls would have become incapacitated quickly and unable to signal anyone. Realistically, the measures in this bill are unlikely to have made any difference other than to make the girls' bodies easier to find, assuming that they actually obeyed the law and wore their PFD's, which is anything but a certainty. Harsh as that sounds, it the reality of the situation.

On the other hand, if the girls had understood the degree of danger the conditions posed that day, they may never have gone out on the water or may have stayed close to shore. Education prevents tragedies from happening in the first place. At best, equipment helps to compensate for mistakes; at worst, it's just more junk in the boat. While none of us would advocate paddling when ill-equipped, gear alone doesn't save lives; you need the knowledge to use it. Equipment rules must be carefully crafted in order to make sure that they don't end up excluding more effective alternatives, due to the lack of a thorough understanding of the issues. Unless Rep. Gomes is a kayaker, there's no way she can possibly understand what's involved.

By all means approach Rep. Gomes. Explain that this issue has been heavily debated in the kayaking community and discuss the concerns we've raised. You don't have to be an ambassador for the NSPN per se, just a concerned citizen and kayaker who has gotten input from his peers.

Explain that the NSPN has taken steps (the safety brochures), in conjunction with local businesses and harbormasters, to help educate the local paddling community. Any help she could provide us in expanding that program (or something like it) to reach more outlets and harbormasters would be greatly appreciated and would probably have at least as much positive impact on kayak safety as her proposed legislation.

Explain to her that requiring PFD's only for kayakers is analagous to requiring seatbelts only in cars that weigh under 2500 pounds; it will have no impact on the majority of accidental deaths. Urge her to look beyond the single kayaking tragedy and see the big picture. Power/sail boaters are required to carry a PFD for every passenger on board already, so why not make them put them on? They do no good stuffed below deck somewhere.

Explain that even the best intentioned laws are pointless if they're unenforceable. Ask her how she plans to ensure compliance? Kayaks can - and do - launch from just about anywhere. Since the Coast Guard cannot enforce state laws, how does she propose to patrol the coastline, looking for whistles and compasses? The obvious answer is that it can't be done, so no one will ever know if a given kayaker is complying with the law until it's too late.

Explain to her that concerned kayakers would rather work with her to craft legislation that would have maximum beneficial effect, than to fight against proposals that we feel are ill-conceived or simply unfair. We very much feel that we have a stake in our own safety and the safety of the greater paddling community and we're willing to do something about it, given the opportunity. We have already made some strides on our own and if she teams up with us, we can have a greater impact that either of us can alone.

Basically, there are many points you can make that will help Rep. Gomes see the overall picture better. Hopefully, she'll be willing to accept constructive input.

[eneumeier]

I spoke with some staff people last fall about the Gomes bill. They said that the compass and whistle requirements were removed in committee and if the bill was not brought to the floor for a vote in 2004 Gomes was going to reintroduce it in 2005, which starts the whole process over. She has apparently done that.

I specifically asked about the definition of "kayak" and the bill did not contain one. The General Laws also fail to define kayak. This is a problem.

The two young women who died were violating the law: PFDs were required and they did not have them.

I think requiring PFDs to be worn in the summer any time any one is is a kayak on the water in MA makes no sense. Such a broad requirement would include rec boats in shallow, warm ponds. They might as well require PFDs for people who swim out to rafts like on Cochituate.

Liz N.

[alcoons]

Brian.

Thanks for your suggestions and ideas on how to contact our representatives as an individual. I just wrote Representative Paul Casey again (I did last year), to remind him of the core issues and the hope of kayakers to be part of discourse on possible legislation. I also mentioned NSPNs efforts to promote safey (classes, brochures, working with Harbormasters, etc.).

I received a personalized response last year and felt that at least our concerns were heard. That made it seem worth the effort.

For those who wish to email or write your rep, addresses are at

http://www.mass.gov/legis/memmenuh.htm