District 7 Division 12
Flotilla 12 Edisto Island, South Carolina
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Department of Natural Resources
South Carolina Boaters Handbook
Well-intentioned programs that encourage the use of a designated operator aren’t going to make much of a dent in the numbers of alcohol-related boating deaths, a research team is warning today. The reason: A passenger who consumes alcohol on board is just as likely to die as an operator who is drinking, say researchers at the University of North Carolina and Johns Hopkins University.
Their conclusion, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is based on a study of 221 boating deaths in North Carolina and Maryland between 1990 and 1998. People who are drinking often fall overboard and drown, the study found. And that can happen even if the boat is stationary, the researchers say, pointing to the death of Hollywood star Natalie Wood 20 years ago.
"People often assume that alcohol-related boating accidents involve a collision," said Dr. Robert D. Foss, research scientist at the UNC Highway Safety Research Center. "That happens, of course, but most deaths result from drowning – often when boats aren’t moving at all."
The team said about 80 percent of fatalities result from drowning.
The image of the crazed drunken boater ramming into a dock or another boat is "a pretty rare phenomenon," Foss said. "If you’ve got a stone-cold sober boat operator and an impaired passenger, that passenger is still at high risk."
The research teams studied boating fatality records from medical examiners, and spent three summers interviewing and obtaining breath alcohol measurements from boaters in both states.
Alarmingly, the study finds it doesn’t take much alcohol to bring about impairment. Even with a blood alcohol content of only .01 percent, the risk to operators and passengers increased 30 percent, Foss said. The risk of death was more than 52 times greater when victims showed a blood alcohol content of .25 milligrams per deciliter, he said.
"Before we did the study, we had a fairly good idea about the risk curve for drinking drivers on the road, but we had no idea about the risk for boaters who had been drinking," Foss said. "This study gives us the first look at the shape of the risk curve for boaters."
The study was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.