Re: [Paddlewise] Licensing [was Crab Pots Rescued]

At 06:12 PM 7/22/00 -0400, Sailboat Restorations, Inc. wrote:
>(Lotsa snippola)
>
>I wonder if the best thing isn't for some responsible, knowledgeable people
>who do use water craft to start working on proposed legislation now, before
>less informed, less well-intentioned people do it.  Mind you, I'm not
>*proposing* this per se -- I'm thinking out loud about a subject that has
>troubled me for some time.  I'm not sure what I think about it.  What do you
>think?

I hate, dread, and detest the thought. The idea is to get out a little bit
beyond the need for lisences, permits and the like and to enjoy a little
bit of elbow room. The idea is to resent a world in which the do-gooders
keep you from doing anything that's remotely fun because they think it
might be dangerous for you.

At least, that's the dream. Get out on any multiple use body of water, and
liscensing starts to make a little sense. We do, for instance, in Michigan
require kids to be 14, and have gone through a training course, to run a
jetski -- yet when I go out on a jetski lake, I can look at perhaps one of
ten jetskiiers, and say, "Kid, there's no way you're old enough to run that
thing."
Enforcement isn't doing the job.

But while many boaters, of every persuasion, are reasonably competent and
safe, there are many that are not. This spring, I went through a USCG
Auxiliary safe boating course. I didn't learn much that I didn't already
know -- mostly, some bits and pieces about marine radio -- but wanted to
make sure that I wasn't missing something important. The problem is that
you'll never get the bozo troublemakers into that kind of minimal training
without some sort of legal requirement, and that may well not be enough.

In this state, for example, it's required that you go through a hunter
safety class to be able to get a hunting liscense -- unless you were old
enough to have a hunting liscense before the law went into effect. Slowly,
there are getting to be more and more people out there that have minimal
hunter safety training, for whatever good it does them. And, hunting safety
related accidents are showing a little decline.

While there are some positive sides to boater liscensing, there are some
negatives. Would the gain from the positive be worth the increase in
regulation in an already over-regulated world?

Tough question. At the moment, I vote no -- but then I wonder . . .

-- Wes

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