According to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s recently published annual summary of boating accidents in Arkansas, people who spent time on the water last year saw a 9 percent decrease in boating accidents and a 36 percent decrease in the number of boaters who died from boating accidents. The fatality rate is also the lowest over a five-year span.
A total of 60 reported boating accidents occurred in 2018, resulting in an estimated $456,220 in property damage, 29 injuries requiring medical attention and seven fatalities. Seven of those six victims drowned. In all, 90 percent of accidents involved a single boat, while all of the fatalities, according to the report, contained only one vessel.
“Every year we see the same thing, if adult boaters would wear a properly fitting and functional life vest, we would avoid nearly all of the fatalities we see on the water,” said Capt. Stephanie Weatherington, AGFC boating law administrator. “Three of the six individuals who drowned were not wearing a life vest, and the other three were either worn improperly or the life vest was found to be in poor condition with flotation missing or damaged.”
Weatherington says many people carry life vests on board their boat just to be legal, but fail to maintain them or make sure they fit properly, rendering them ineffective.
“Even in most of our boating fatalities, there was a life vest on board the boat, it just wasn’t being worn,” Weatherington said. “It’s the same story with non-fatal boating accidents.”
According to the report, out of the 204 people involved in last year’s boating accidents, only 32 percent were wearing a life jacket at the time of the accident.
“Eighteen percent were required by law to wear one.,” Weatherington added. “So that means only 14 percent of boaters who were in an accident were voluntarily wearing their life vest. We have to do better.”
Boaters who were operating the vessel during the time of the accident did not fit any sort of mold in regard to age or boating experience, either. This is a common trend, and as with most years there were just as many operators with more than 500 hours of on-the-water experience involved in accidents as there were people who less than 20 hours of experience. Operator inattention was responsible for more accidents than inexperience, and the average age of operators involved in accidents was 44 years old.
The most accident-prone waterbodies in the state, according to the report, were the Arkansas River, with seven accidents, followed by Greers Ferry and Lake Ouachita with six. No other state lake or river had more than four accidents last year, the stats show. Even Lake Hamilton – one of the most developed and heavily-trafficked lake in the state – had three accidents.
Leading the way for accident causes were operator inattention, with nine incidents, and operator inexperience with eight. It also comes as no surprise that the most accident-prone month is July with 16, followed, by June and August, each with 10 accidents total across the state. It’s also no surprise that weekends bring the highest risk for accident. Saturdays last year saw 20 accidents occur, followed closely by Sundays, at 19.
Predictably, the least amount of incidents occurred in the cold months of January through March, with only one accident seen in each month last year.
“I’m very happy that we saw a decrease in hunting accidents and fatalities, but we need more people, especially experienced boaters, to take the time to attend a boating safety course in Arkansas,” Weatherington said. “More than 66 percent of boaters in last year’s accidents did not have boating education, and I really feel like if some of these people had attended the education course they may have avoided the accident they were involved in.”