Boat Speed Limits
Bill Bertholdt (Laconia Daily Sun, 7/27/06) in his Letter to the Editor, gives us two incidents to help bolster his argument that setting up boat speed limits will make all other boaters safer. I disagree.
The first reason he expounds upon in his own letter "Our experience on Lake Winnipesaukee so far this season hasn't seen boating education teach very many of the boating public much of anything that has to do with boating laws, regularions, courtesies". Perhaps, one might think, that if the boating public were to learn these laws better, and if there were better enforcement of current laws, most of the other problems related to unsafe boating would become irrelevant? This, I would have no problem with.
Second - this is two incidents over HOW many "events" of boating on the Big Lake? Let's put this into context - what is the empirical evidence of one or more seasons of accidents (even include real close, near accidents of this over so many boaters? What if the numbers turn out to be that 99.7% of the boating public are fine - you would impose this because of 0.3% of the population?
I await discussion.
