Photo courtesy of Arkansas Game and Fish Commission
According to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s (AGFC) 2023 Boating Accident Year-End Report, the number of people who died in boating accidents dropped to a five-year low last year. Only nine fatalities resulted from the 61 boating accidents compiled by Cpl. Sydney Grant, Boating Law Administrator in the AGFC’s Hot Springs office.
Although the number of fatalities is the lowest it’s been since 2018, the number of accidents remained virtually unchanged from 2022. According to Grant, 60 boating accidents were recorded in 2022, while 61 were reported in 2023. Of the fatalities recorded, the majority were not wearing life jackets.
According to Grant, six of the fatalities were the result of drowning, two from trauma sustained in the accident, and one from an underlying medical issue. None of the victims were wearing a life jacket.
Of all 185 people involved in accidents last year, Grant states only 35 percent were wearing life jackets. One-third of those who were wearing life-jackets were required by law to wear them because they were skiing, operating a personal watercraft or were 12 years old or younger.
Capt. Stephanie Weatherington, who had headed up the agency’s boating law administration efforts for more than a decade says the lack of life-jacket use still plagues administrators, not only in Arkansas but on a national level.
The top causes of accidents, according to Grant, were operator inattention and operator inexperience. The metric for determining inexperience is based on the operator’s use of the vessel they were in at the time of crash.
The highest percentage of accidents occurred between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, which coincides with the time of day most operators experience inattention.
Seventy-five percent of operators involved in accidents had no boating education training prior to heading out on the water. Boating education is mandatory for anyone of legal age to operate a motorboat or sailboat who was born after 1985. All of the accidents involving fatalities had operators with no known Boater Education training.
Grant encourages anyone who is interested in boating to take Boater Education, emphasizing that it only takes a day and in-person classes are free. Online classes are available for a small fee.
The full report and guidance on how to enroll in a Boater Education are available at www.agfc.com/education/boater-education.
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