While there may no criminal liability for failure to assist someone in grave danger on land; it is in fact a legal obligation, with criminal consequences I think, for a vessel to assist a man over board. A vessel must also assist another vessel in distress. I suppose a swimmer that swam from shore rather than fell off a vessel might be considered akin to a MOB. There are a whole set of laws on the water that don't apply on land. There are specialized courts that enforce these Maritime Laws. These laws were, of course, made with vessels much larger than kayaks in mind. To what extent these laws would apply to a narrow beam, non-motorized vessel where the sole occupant is sitting virtually immobile, I'm not sure. And how far away from the shoreline a swimmer must be before the Maritime Laws take effect I'm not sure. I wouldn't be surprised to see them applied to the degree that the kayak and it's skipper were deemed able to assist, however. Your kayak is a vessel, ! ! and you are it's skipper. The law does not require one to put their own vessel at risk in the attempt to assist. Reasonable assistance can be as simple as calling someone else for help. Obviously, the ability of a kayak to perform a rescue or provide assistance is not comparable to most larger vessels. I am not a lawyer and don't know the intricacies to the law; but the general idea is interesting. I wonder if there has ever been a legal or criminal case involving a kayak's failure to assist. It's probably never happened. The expectations for a kayak to perform a rescue are understandably low; and it would be difficult to prove negligence. >18 Aug 2000 From: "Sailboat Restorations, Inc." Subject: How would you deal with it ....; Mark wrote: >As far as I know, there is no such thing as criminal liability for not rendering aid to a person in danger. I remember my old torts professor's explanation: "Let's say you are walking by a swimming pool, and there is a person in the pool drowning...." *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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