Tom Kunich writes:

On Tuesday, July 16, 2019 at 5:58:34 AM UTC-7, news18 wrote:
On Tue, 16 Jul 2019 12:06:11 +0700, John B. wrote:


As I believe I wrote before, it is probably required by the insurance
company. Just like wearing a life jacket while aboard the crew change
boat although the water is so shallow that you can usually walk ashore.

OTOH, I've seen plenty of incidents with watercraft where wearing a
lifejacket is worthwhile insurance. If it can float a craft, then you
can drown in it and you don't always enter the water in a controlled way.

And, quite often to short circuit any discussion about "I don't need to
wear one over there" the rule is that ALL personal will wear safety
equipment ALL they time they are on the job site. Or words to that
effect.

40,000 pedestrians were killed doing things like walking across
parking lots to go to a store. How many people were drowned on
watercraft last year?

In 2017, according to the US Coast Guard

https://www.uscgboating.org/library/...stics-2017.pdf

In 2017, the Coast Guard counted 4,291 accidents that involved
658 deaths, 2,629 injuries and approximately $46 million dollars
of damage to pro perty as a result of recreational boating
accidents.

The fatality rate was 5.5 deaths per 100,000 registered
recreational vessels. This rate represents a 6.8% decrease from
the 2016 fatality rate of 5.9 deaths per 100,000 registered
recreational vessels.

Compared to 2016, the number of accidents decreased 3.9%, the
number of deaths decreased 6.1%, and the number of injuries
decreased 9.4%.

Where cause of death was known, 76% of fatal boating accident
victims drowned. Of those drowning victims with reported life
jacket usage, 84.5% w ere not wearing a life jacket.

Where length was known, eight out of every ten boaters who
drowned were using vessels less than 21 feet in length.

Alcohol use is the leading known contributing factor in fatal
boating accidents; where the primary cause was known, it was
listed as the leading factor in 19% of deaths.

You might note that small, non-powered vessels do not require
registration, and probably accounted for some of the accidents.

It's required in the US for recreational boaters to have life jackets or
other floatation devices on board for all, but not to actually wear them
all the time.