Boating Accidents
Injuries Sustained from Accidents on Boats
Have you had a particularly sunny day spending time in a boat or yacht that turned awry due to unexpected accident on board and at sea?
Well, misfortunes do happen at the most unexpected times. And sometimes, it leaves serious physical injuries. Accidents on boats are particularly tricky since this involve the sea and its undetermined depths. You would never know if you’re going to spend the last days of your life not on dry land… Well, before we go into the gory details…we might as well tackle your rights as victims of injury which resulted from accidents on boats and what legal actions you can do.
We are going to give you the important facts you need to know, before anything else. Did you know that there are almost thirteen million recreational numbered boats in the United States? Meanwhile, boating accident resulting to injuries number close to six thousand every year and cause over thirty nine million dollars in property damage. Last 2002, in a boating accident case, 750 people were killed. In almost 40% of these boating accidents case fatalities involve alcohol. Fatalities are most often the result of drowning.
Once accidents on a boat or any vessel at sea occur, authorities should be informed quickly about it. The case is required to be reported to the federal or state authorities especially when following circumstances happen: the accident causes the death or disappearance, indicating death or injury, of any individual; the boating accident caused injuries to the persons in it and requires medical care beyond first aid and/or if damages to the vessel or property exceeds five hundred dollars.
Boating accidents involving open motorboats, personal watercrafts (PWCs) or cabin motorboats are commonly reported cases. Accidents may happen due to collisions with fixed objects or moving vessels, capsizing or sinking, fire or explosion, falls or ejection overboard and other circumstances. Often, negligence resulting from operator inattention is the foremost contributing factor in a case of accidents on boats, according to the Boating Accident Report Database (BARD) system. Boat operator’s carelessness or recklessness and operator’s inexperience or excessive speed follows in frequency are also causes of these types of boat accidents.
Physical harm to a person caused by a boating accident case must be filed with the proper authorities within 48 hours that accident happened. On the other hand, if only vessel or property damage were caused by the boating accident case, case can be filed ten days from the occurrence.
If you or someone you know have been injured in a boating accident case and operator negligence is involved, you may be eligible to file a claim or a lawsuit to seek compensation for damages including injuries, medical costs, pain and suffering, lost wages, and property or vessel damages. This may compensate your could-have-been good day at sea, but again maybe any amount wouldn’t. Sad events, these types of accidents.
About The Author
Lala B. is a 26 year-old Communication Arts graduate, with a major in Journalism. Right after graduating last 1999, she worked for one year as a clerk then became a Research, Publication and Documentation Program Director at a non-government organization, which focuses on the rights, interests and welfare of workers for about four years.
Book reading has always been her greatest passion — mysteries, horrors, psycho-thrillers, historical documentaries and classics. She got hooked into it way back when she was but a shy kid.
Her writing prowess began as early as she was 10 years old in girlish diaries. With writing, she felt freedom – to express her viewpoints and assert it, to bring out all concerns — imagined and observed, to bear witness.
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This article was posted on February 23, 2005
Coast Guard probes cause of clam boat accident
A day after the clamshell-carrying Providenza capsized off of Eastern Point and its two-man crew were rescued by a nearby fishing boat, the 38-foot vessel was hauled out of the water yesterday while the Coast Guard worked to find out why it overturned.
Coast Guard officials yesterday afternoon said they had finished interviews with the crew of the Providenza and witnesses to its capsizing, but had not yet determined a cause for the accident.
At least 39 people drowned and five were missing after a river boat accident in Vietnam Sunday when a crowded vessel sank while taking people to a market, online news site VnExpress said. The boat sank in strong currents 20 metres (65 feet) from shore on the Gianh river in central Quang Binh province, a survivor and a provincial official were quoted as telling the VnExpress online news portal. "They have already recovered 39 bodies," Quang Binh provincial people’s committee chairman Phan Lam Phuong was quoted as saying. "Most of them are women and children. They have saved 36 other people."
Culver police say 72-year-old Ronald D. King’s wife notified them around 2:45 p.m., after he failed to return from an "ice boat" outing on the lake. An ice boat is similar to a sail boat, only that it runs on skis on top of the ice.
Firefighters eventually found King’s boat on the ice, in the middle of the lake. He had fallen into the water and was partially submerged when they got to him.
